SOLD OUT TONIGHT "Anna in the Tropics", Cigars, Tolstoy & Mojitos - 1929 Florida

OK these things never sell out - except for today!

I received this note from Alan & Audrey, Managers of The Main Street Playhouse

Opening night is already sold out.

Other performances will be on Thursdays June 14 & 21 at 8:00 pm; Fridays June 15 & 22 at 8:00 pm; Saturdays June 9, 16 & 23 at 5:00 pm; Sundays June 10, 17 & 24 at 5:00 pm.

Do me a favor - check our schedule and yours - and let's try to come up with another date that works

Let's have this dialogue either via email - or even better on the Message Board

And the next round of Mojitos are on me!

Jim

[masked]

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Anna in the Tropics

Opening Night gets you complimentary mojitos and a cigar!

June 8th until June 24th

Nilo Cruz first intended to set his play Anna in the Tropics in the 1800s, a time when lectors (readers) played an important role in cigar factories. Cruz, however, reconsidered and decided that a historical account would be ??too complicated?? to render dramatically, so he chose instead to focus on the role the lector played in the factories during a time when personal and financial independence were inextricably linked. Speaking in an article by Jennifer Kiger for the South Coast Repertory Playgoers Guide, Cruz states that ??I decided to write about possibly the last lector in Tampa. The lectors were the first to be fired when the Depression began, so I set the play in 1929.?? Lectors read novels and news to the workers, who paid the lector directly from their own wages.

Cruz also wanted to tell the story of Cubans who fled to the United States prior to the 1959 revolution. ??These were not immigrants. They were exiles who wanted Cuba?s independence, and they would have been killed if they stayed there. I thought it was important to document this part of our culture,?? says Cruz (also quoted in Kiger).

Anna in the Tropics was written while Cruz was playwright-in-residence at the New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, which first staged a production of the play in 2002.

Anna in the Tropics portrays the lives of cigar factory workers in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, when a new lector, perhaps the last to ply his trade, is hired. The men and women remain divided in their loyalties as economic hardship and the pressure to abandon old traditions force the owners of the cigar factory to adopt new, progressive manufacturing methods if they wish to stay in business.

As the lector reads from Anna Karenina, a novel of adultery set in nineteenth-century Russia, he casts a spell over the workers, transforming their passions and desires through the affirming power of art. That the love they seek may result in a tragic end is ordained as much by the story of the Russian noblewoman as it is by the actions of the workers themselves.

In 1930 a photographer for National Geographic captured the reader for a cigar factory in Tampa at his lavish tribune.

Thursday, June 14th and 21st at 8pm, Friday, June 8th, 15th and 22nd at 8pm, Saturday, June 9th, 16th, and 23rd at 5pm and Sunday, June 10th, 17th and 24th at 5pm. For ticket information, call Robert at (305) 823-8548. Ticket prices are $12.00 for students and seniors and $15.00 for adults. This is a show recommended for mature audiences.

Our address is 6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes, Florida 33014. We are located within The Shops at Main Street, a strip mall located across the street from Buca di Beppo. Within The Shops, we are located accross from Johnny Rockets, near to Tony Roma's

Main Street Players is the business name of the Community Theatre of Miami Lakes Inc., the latest incarnation of the longest continuously-running community theater group in South Florida. Since 1974 the group has staged over 100 plays and musicals. It has provided an outlet through which local adults and children could express their talents, and it is dedicated to promoting interest in and education for the arts. Former members have gone on to become professional actors and actresses in New York and elsewhere. Others have used their stage experience to improve their professional lives as trial lawyers, teachers or politicians.