If artists can't give birth to their own creativity, is it enough to drive them mad?
Absolutely, says Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Nilo Cruz.
"We're meant to be working at our craft and we're meant to be sharing our craft with the world," says Cruz.
The redemptive — and healing — power of art is one of the themes Cruz explores in his new play, Sed En La Calle del Agua ('Thirst On Water Street').
The play — which Cruz also directs — makes its premiere this week at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium.
Much of the action takes place in 1929 in a mental asylum. One of the patients, Emma Rose, is a painter who has fallen into a state of depression after losing her infant daughter to illness.
READ MORE: Students experience 'Anna in the Tropics' after school district reverses ban
Cruz says he started writing the play five years ago but shelved it. He took it up again after Alexa Kuve, the founder and executive producing director of Arca Images, asked him if he had anything they could collaborate on.
He says the story is personal for him, since it's essentially a love story about two artists — Emma Rose's husband is also a painter — trying to find themselves artistically. And also about the domestic obstacles that often stand in the way.
"The year that my daughter was born, I was also discovering my voice as a playwright," says Cruz. "I sort of struggled with being a working artist and also having to be a father."
Miami, the Cuban-American playwright's home since fleeing Cuba with his family in 1970, is a frequent host for Cruz's work.
His most recent production, Two Sisters and a Piano, had a run at Miami Beach's Colony Theatre earlier this year, while Anna in the Tropics — for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003 — made headlines last year when Miami-Dade County Public Schools briefly banned students from attending the play's 20th anniversary performances at the same venue.
Sed En La Calle del Agua, presented by Arca Images at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, will be performed entirely in Spanish but with a simultaneous English translation.
Offstage voice performers translate the stage dialogue in real time — and audience members listen through wireless headphones.
IF YOU GO
Sed En La Calle Del Agua
By Nilo Cruz
Presented by Arca Images in Spanish with Simultaneous English Translation
WHEN:
8 p.m. on Thursday, March 14, through Saturday, March 16
3 p.m. on Sunday, March 17
WHERE:
Miami Dade County Auditorium
On.Stage Black Box Theater
2901 W. Flagler Street
Miami, FL
For more information, visit Arca Images.
