By Rebecca Wallace
To transform California actors into Cuban-American workers at a Florida cigar factory during Prohibition, a dialect coach was brought in. Also, a dance instructor to teach the finer points of danzin, what actor Vilma Silva calls “sals-trot, a kind of Latinized fox trot.”
But the icing on the cake for the TheatreWorks production of Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics,” which opens this weekend, was the cigar roller.
A man who owns a cigar-rolling company in Union City helped the actors learn to gather the filler tobacco into a bunch without squeezing too hard (“Hold the cigar tenderly, like you’d hold a woman,” he said), remove veins from the leaves, and choose the finest leaves for the outside.
It was difficult, delicate work — the cigar roller’s training course usually takes 90 days — but so fitting for this layered script. The Pulitzer-winning “Anna,” which is having its Bay Area premiere, has been praised for its complexity and ambiguity.
The play spins the tale of a suave young storyteller brought in to read the classics — including “Anna Karenina” — to the workers as they roll cigars, a common practice in pre-mechanized days. Both Tolstoy and the lector, Juan Julian, cast a spell over the factory, and Juan Julian becomes enmeshed in the workers’ lives.
Scenes often feel like snapshots, moments of lives to be pieced together, director Amy Gonzalez said. Relationships between the characters develop behind and between the scenes.
“The words often only give us a hint,” said Gonzalez, who is intrigued by the intricate ways the plot progresses.
So are Silva (who plays Conchita, a daughter of the factory owner) and David DeSantos (Juan Julian), who have gathered in a small rehearsal room with Gonzalez to discuss the play.
DeSantos says the script’s ambiguity means that audiences, like the factory workers swept up in the classics, must be active, deep listeners to reap the play’s rewards.
“We talk throughout the play about the art of listening,” he says, leaning forward in his seat for emphasis. “They have to hear. … If the audience is absorbed in the world, it’ll make sense.”
In these days of rapid-fire information, listening is a lost art. Even in “Anna” it’s already slipping away: Lectors are a dying breed as factories become industrialized. It’s hard to hear a novel over the clanking of machines.
As the “Anna” artists chat, it’s clear a mellow rapport has already developed, even though it’s early in the rehearsal schedule at this point. The three often complete each other’s sentences, and the actors often defer to the director to answer a question first.
As Latino artists, Gonzalez, Silva and DeSantos also all share a connection to the script penned by the Cuban-American Cruz, the first Latino artist to win the Pulitzer for drama.
“I’m Cuban. I was so excited when it got the award,” the bubbly Gonzalez said of “Anna.”
Silva, whose family is from Nicaragua, also felt drawn to the script because of her heritage. “There are things recognizable to me,” she said. “The flavor and the music — there’s something about it.”
The roles in “Anna” avoid falling into the tired stereotypes for Latino actors, DeSantos says. Instead, “People will see parts of themselves.”
Possibilities for Latino actors in film and television may still be limited, Silva said. “I don’t pursue it as much,” she said. “I played a maid once.”
DeSantos, on the other hand, lives in L.A. and does more TV work (he was recently “killed” by Faye Dunaway on an episode of “CSI”). He says opportunities for Latino actors there have really opened up, largely thanks to the work of such actors as Esai Morales, Edward James Olmos and Benjamin Bratt. The number of Latino members of the Screen Actors Guild has also grown sharply, he added.
Gonzalez, meanwhile, is content to direct a variety of plays dealing with all manner of worlds. At TheatreWorks in 2001, for example, she directed “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” an Alfred Uhry play about a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family in the South. It moved her so much she cried regularly.
“Underneath it all, it’s the same humanity,” she said.
INFORMATION:
What: TheatreWorks’ production of “Anna in the Tropics” by Nilo Cruz
Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto
When: Through April 2, with performances Tuesday through Sunday (no performance March 28)
Cost: Tickets are $21-$51
Info: Call (650) 903-6000 or go to www.theatreworks.org
