The Washington Post - 17.02.2020

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the washington post

.

friday, february 21, 2020

Agony,” on the other hand, has no

direct connection to Cuba. The

play follows a grieving opera star

(Luz Nicolás) as she forges a

complicated bond with a young

man (Joel Hernández Lara) who

has received her late husband’s

heart, via transplant. “Exquisite

Agony” is, however, written in

Cruz’s native Spanish, with the

GALA production presented

alongside English surtitles.

“Even when I was writing in

English, I was always trying to

capture the Spanish rhythms in

the writing,” says Cruz, who also

directed this production. “I think

it’s enriching just to live in two

languages, and to see what each

language offers the other.”

Although machado’s “Celia

and fidel” follows a decidedly

more political path than “Exqui-

site Agony,” Cruz sees the reso-

nance of highlighting two Cuban

Americans’ voices on D.C. stages

at a time when immigration and

the global refugee crisis endure as

divisive political issues.

“I always feel that, when I see a

work of art from a particular

country, what is painted in the

news as being extreme and dras-

tic is less so,” Cruz says. “What we

get in the news is just the politics

of those who are in power, but we

don’t get to see the intimate sto-

ries of the people who are some-

times the victims of that power.

“I think this is why I do the-

ater,” he continues. “Because we

see the other angle, and we see

real human beings. Even though

they might be fictional, they come

from reality.”

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military service.

machado, for his part, grew up

in the coastal town of Cojímar, the

well-off grandson of a business-

man with a successful bus compa-

ny. When machado was 7, h e went

with his family to a local bar to

meet revolutionaries Che Gue-

vara, Camilo Cienfuegos and Cas-

tro. “A t that point,” he recalls, “I

thought [Castro] was Jesus

Christ.”

A year later, machado’s father

told him and his 5-year-old broth-

er that they were flying to miami

for the weekend. In reality, they

were among the 14,000 children

brought to the United States as

part of an American program

designed to shield children from

Communist indoctrination,

about which his parents had

grown increasingly concerned.

Though Castro has loomed

over machado’s l ife and work, the

former Cuban president has nev-

er appeared as a character in one

of his plays. That will change

when robert m. Jimenez portrays

Castro in “Celia and fidel,” a

1980s-set drama exploring the

relationship between the revolu-

tionary and his trusted confidant

Celia Sánchez (marian Licha).

“There’s no middle ground in

how people see him, and I wanted

to write about the middle

ground,” machado says of the

play, which will be directed by

Arena Stage artistic director mol-

ly Smith. “I wanted to explore the

fact that fidel was a genius, that

he did what he did because he had

to, and that he became everything

he once hated: a totalitarian.”

The plot of Cruz’s “Exquisite

who in 2003 became the first
Latin playwright to win the Pulit-
zer Prize for “A nna in the Tropics.”
“We are outsiders, and from the
moment I came to this country I
was an exile. When I discovered
myself as a writer, it was very easy
for me.”
While Cruz’s work often is lyri-
cal and allegorical, machado has
a more grounded approach to
storytelling. But they each cite
Cuban American playwright
maría Irene fornés as a mentor.
They also have each followed her
lead by teaching: machado at
New York University, Columbia
University and Sarah Lawrence
College; and Cruz at Yale and
Brown universities and the Uni-
versity of Iowa.
With plays by both writers in
production at Washington the-
aters this month, machado calls
the synergy “an opportunity for
the D.C. audience to see two
voices that started in Cuba, and
how they developed into very
different styles and ways of think-
ing.”
reflecting on his childhood in
Cuba, Cruz recalls a “dual reality”
in which his family publicly sup-
ported Communism, while pri-
vately holding anti-revolutionary
beliefs. When Cruz was very
young, his father served a prison
sentence for attempting to flee
the country. Cruz and his parents
eventually gained approval to
leave for the United States, but
they were forced to leave his two
older sisters behind because they
were married to men bound to

cuban from 22

Rob Klug

From left, José antonio González, playwright nilo cruz and Luz nicolás work on “Exquisite agony.”
cruz says his cuban american identity remains an inherent aspect of his creativity.

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