Asolo Rep revives a lost world for 'Anna in the Tropics'

Nilo Cruz’ “Anna in the Tropics” is bringing a heat wave to the Asolo Repertory Theatre stage. His Pulitzer Prize-winning play unfolds in the Tampa neighorhood of Ybor City in the 1920s.

Passions come to a boil after a family-owned cigar factory hires a new “lector” to read Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” aloud to the workers rolling cigars. That sounds like a magical-realist fantasy. But it’s a historically accurate detail.

At the dawn of the Great Depression, Tampa cigar factories hired professional orators who read great literature to their workers. It’s all true, though it seems strange to 21st century minds.

The world of Cruz’ play is radically different from our own. The Ybor City of 1929 is a lost world. For director Marcella Lorca and her creative team, rebuilding that lost city has been a labor of love.

Many of the actors share the characters’ Latin heritage. Lorca herself was born in Cuba — just like the playwright. The scenic designer hails from the Philippines. Cruz’ play speaks to them. And they want to do it justice.

“We’re deeply committed to authenticity,” Lorca says. “We’ve all worked hard to realize this time and place, with meticulous research, evocative design and a deep reverence for the era’s cultural heartbeat in the world of this play.”

Lorca describes the play’s heartbeat as a rhythm of the characters’ inner and outer worlds. We’ll start with the visible world.

Here’s what you’ll see on stage after the curtain goes up ...

A time and a place for everything

Regina Garcia is a Chicago-based scenic designer and the head of the scenic design department at DePaul University. The set for the Asolo Rep’s iteration of “Anna” is her brainchild. It’s had a long gestation.

Garcia has nurtured a long love affair with this play. She’s wanted to design its cigar factory set for more than a decade — and actually started a Ybor City research folder long before this Asolo Rep production. Over the years, Garcia has collected photos, architectural drawings and historical nuggets.

Image courtesy of Adrian Van Stee

Why go to all that trouble? “Because scenic designers are cultural magpies,” she laughs. “I certainly am! I did all that research just in case I needed it someday. I’m so happy that I finally do.”

After Asolo Rep called on Garcia, her Ybor City research kicked into overdrive. She tapped the Library of Congress for historical diagrams, photos and floor plans. She gathered swathes of colors and the insignias of the era’s cigar boxes. That painstaking research serves Garcia’s work as a scenic designer. But research and design are not the same thing.

Files bulging with historical photographs and floor plans make Garcia’s job easier. But they don’t do the job for her. What is a scenic designer’s job, exactly?

Garcia answers without hesitation. “A good scenic designer serves the director’s vision,” she says. “That’s my job. A good director serves the play’s story. That’s Marcella’s job.”

Garcia adds that the director is always her guide in set design. But different directors guide her to very different places.

“Depending on the director, every production has its own unique goals and emphasis,” she says. “My job is to create an environment that amplifies the director’s choices. My set design for ‘Anna’ is my own work — but it’s a collaborative creation. The world we’ve created on stage reflects Marcella’s approach as a director.”

“Poetry in motion” is how Garcia describes Lorca’s approach. “Marcella thinks about space in a very poetic way,” she says. “Her direction is detail-oriented and movement-focused. Nobody stays in one place very long. The characters keep moving! She’s constantly choreographing these moments of connection and separation between them.”

A static space would be a straitjacket for Lorca’s kinetic vision. Garcia’s flexible set frees the director up to keep the play moving.

“I designed the set for ‘Anna’ with Marcella’s sense of rhythm and choreography in mind,” Garcia says. “Our set allows for fluid movement. Its spaces contract and expand, depending on characters and the scene.”

Learning about history with a Tampa road trip

The story of “Anna in the Tropics” is fiction. The history behind it isn’t. Cruz’ play unfolds at a specific time and place; his characters reflect the unique subculture of Ybor City in 1929. That historical truth isn’t mere subtext. It’s the heart of the playwright’s storytelling. Lorca and her creative team strive to honor that truth. Rebuilding the Lost City of Ybor isn’t easy. But they try.

“We pay homage to this time period with our costumes, the music and the textures of the set,” says Lorca. “Every element is as authentic as we can make it. It’s all designed to immerse the audience in the world of Nilo Cruz’ play and his characters.”

Lorca and her creative team recently immersed themselves in that world — or what’s left of it. To get closer to historical fact, they took a field trip to a working cigar factory in Ybor City. In 2025.

Image courtesy of Adrian Van Stee

Once inside, they observed master cigar rollers, learned about the trade’s traditions and even participated in a cigar-rolling workshop. “Seeing these living traditions was incredibly moving to us,” says Lorca. “It deepened our connection to the culture we’re recreating on stage.”

Ana Kuzmanić’s costumes talk directly to the eye. They speak of Cuban heritage in a language of fabric and color. Their silent statement is eloquent — and a deft shorthand for Ybor City’s codes of status and identity.

The production’s sets and costumes capture the outer life of Ybor City in 1929. Music and language evoke the characters’ inner worlds.

Cuban composer Dayramir González created and performs the score for this Asolo Rep production. The mood of his music clues you into the characters’ inner lives.

“His music is a wordless form of storytelling,” Lorca says. “We worked closely together developing the dramatic themes and feelings of the songs. Every note reflects the characters’ emotions and experiences.”

Cruz’s pitch-perfect dialogue evokes his characters’ inner and outer worlds. Spoken language is the key to both.

Surprisingly, this Asolo Rep’s production didn’t need a dialect coach. “The actors bring their own heritage and voices to their roles,” Lorca explains. “The actors speak with their own voices — not some accent they’ve learned how to imitate. Their characters aren’t strangers to them. They know exactly who they are.”

The Asolo Rep’s music, direction, set-design, costumes and characterizations are all true to life. But their historical accuracy is a means to an end. It’s not the point.

“Anna in the Tropics” is fact-based fiction. It’s also a story about the power of fiction. Tolstoy’s words have a revolutionary effect on Cruz’ cigar factory characters. They don’t slavishly imitate the characters of “Anna Karenina.” But their stories start to rhyme. It’s an amazing transformation.

Thanks to the reality of the world on stage, it’s also believable.