If you think of dramaturgy in North America, which is so realistic and so literal sometimes, sometimes what theaters - especially dramaturgs - ask for is more information, which sometimes can really weigh down a play. There's only so much information a play can have. If you start putting in so much information, it becomes something completely different, it doesn't sing.
Nilo CruzI think I have a certain kind of style. I think at the same time, I'm aware that there's certain things that I did as a playwright in certain plays, and I try not to repeat myself, even though I have a certain kind of sensibility, and I tend to gravitate toward certain things.
Nilo CruzI was taught to lie at a young age. . . . I think that [A PARK IN OUR HOUSE] describes what people make out of their reality in a totalitarian system like Castro's. They take flight and move into the imagination in order to transcend their immediate reality. I had to write this play. It helped me understand my own loss of innocence.
Nilo CruzTheater is about interpretation and what an actor and what a director brings to a piece too. I'm open to it every time I work with a director and a group of actors. I have to be open to that interpretation. I'm not one of those hysterical playwrights that come and say, "This is not what I intended to do." It's one rendition of the piece.
Nilo CruzI'm very much inspired by the Latin music, especially the romantic boleros. Not that when I sit to write a play I listen to boleros. But I think it's part of my DNA, it's part of my upbringing. I grew up in a house where this is the kind of music my parents used to listen to. This is the kind of music I would even hear in my neighborhood. I think that sort of romanticism is part of the culture.
Nilo CruzI find it's very confusing when one critic tells you one thing and one tells you something completely different. Unless all the critics agree on parts of the play that just didn't work. I have stopped reading reviews, because I find writing is all about courage. You must have courage when you start writing a play and you cannot have the voice - you must write things out. You cannot have the voice of a critic telling you, "That didn't work in that play, you cannot make it work in another play." Every time you do a production, it's an experimentation.
Nilo CruzI feel like I have to be a walking encyclopedia - I constantly have to be explaining myself - especially when I do table work or when I'm talking to a dramaturg about, you know, the culture, but also what I'm trying to do as a writer in this particular play. You know, you have to protect yourself too.
Nilo Cruz