THE IMPOSSIBLE PLAYS of Migdalia Cruz
“Migdalia Cruz rips the American drama out of the bougie living room
and affluent morality crisis, and puts it directly in the human body -
the desirous, gorgeous, disgusting, sacred, and misunderstood flesh
that our souls call home. She probes the many places where beauty and
horror coexist in our lives. No one else writes or thinks like Cruz;
her work changed me and expanded our genre, returning it to its
humble, sacred, and impolite origins. Put more simply, Migadlia's
vision as a writer is ravishing.”
— Quiara Alegría Hudes,
Playwright/Screenwriter, Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award
“This new volume reaffirms Migdalia Cruz as one of America's greatest
playwrights, still working at the height of her powers. These plays
reimagine history and conjure new worlds, through blazing
theatricality, boundless imagination, and heart-wrenching joy. Cruz's
groundbreaking and seminal work continues to define our new American
canon.”
— David Henry Hwang, Playwright/Librettist, Three Time Pulitzer Prize
Finalist
“Creating new worlds in the liminal spaces between the living and the
dead, imagining the
excesses of classical Rome in the context of an ecologically doomed,
dystopian future, and
leaping across centuries to reveal the relationship between a Puerto
Rican pirate in the
seventeenth century and a seminal Mississippi blues musician in the
early twentieth century,
Migdalia defies all expectations by uniting us with the secret corners
of our mortal
understanding. She whisks us by virtue of her theatrical imagination
into realms otherwise
denied our everyday, rational minds. I dare this generation to match
her courage and produce
these magnificent plays!”
— Linda S. Chapman, Artistic Director, New
York Theatre Workshop
“Through these three disparate worlds of Migdalia’s imagination, we
travel from the heart-breaking, to the obscene to the utterly
phantasmagorical, where the impossible is more than impossible: it is
necessary. She is our finest architect of grief in all its glories,
crafting connections between love, violence and redemption, which if
it’s not achieved in this world, then surely in the next.”
— Octavio
Solis, Playwright/Mentor, Lydia, Santos & Santos, Man of the Flesh
I can say that, because tomorrow, I‘ll kill myself.
I’m waiting for my daughter to come visit first. My adopted daughter.
It’s better when there’s someone to mourn you.
(Pause)
It’s better when you wait.
(Pause)
Do you see? Did you feel that tension? Will he shoot himself in the head or throw himself into a pit with hungry lions? Tension. That’s what makes a good poet.
(HE pulls out a gun, holds it flat against his forehead, closes his eyes and smiles.)
I can see the future now. Oh, damn. I’m not in it... I prefer the Past.
—from The Two Roberts
OTHER TITLES IN THE SLEDGEHAMMER SERIES:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Migdalia Cruz, the 2023 DGF Legacy Playwright, is a Bronx-born playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist with over 60 works performed in 150 venues across 40 cities in 12 countries. Her awards include the NEA, McKnight, NYSCA, and TCG/Pew, and she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright.Cruz's mentor María Irene Fornés and her residency at Latino Chicago shaped her career. She co-chaired the DGF Playwriting Fellows, mentors for the Latinx Playwrights' Circle, and is an alumna of New Dramatists.
