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Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
"This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land."
An L.A. Theatre Works production recorded before a live audience at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles in June of 2005. Directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela and starringJimmy Smits as Juan Julian. Note: Use the "Send to Mobile" option to listen to this recording on a mobile device.
Performed in Spanish at the University of Puerto Rico. April 23, 2019.
Pozzetta, George E., and Gary R. Mormino. “The Reader and the Worker: ‘Los Lectores’ and the Culture of Cigarmaking in Cuba and Florida.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 54, 1998, pp. 1–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27672498.
Includes background articles: "El Lector", "The Capital of Cigars," and a summary of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Program for South Coast Repertory's performance SEPTEMBER 28 - OCTOBER 19, 2003.