Tallahassee Hispanic Theater presents "Anna in The Tropics" on February 1, 2, 8 & 9. This Pulitzer-Prize winning play by Nilo Cruz will be performed at The Carriage House at the Goodwood Museum on Feb. l & 2 , 8 & 9, 2017 at 8pm.

The play is set in 1929 in Ybor City, a section of Tampa, and the center of the cigar industry. When Cuban immigrants brought the cigar-making industry to Florida in the 19th century, they carried with them another tradition. As the workers toiled away in the factory hand-rolling each cigar, the lector, historically well-dressed and well-spoken, would read to them. In this story, the lector reads Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, sparking the characters' lives and relationships to spin out of control.

“The art of listening to stories is analogous with dreaming,” writes Nilo Cruz in his introduction to the play, and “the tradition of having lectores in the cigar factories can be traced back to the Taino Indians [for whom] the sacred tobacco leaf was tied to the language of the gods.”  Cruz’s sensual, poetic language and imagery recalls slower and simpler times before the mechanization of the cigar industry.