Exquisite Agony

After Millie’s husband Lorenzo dies in a car crash, his heart is used to save a young man’s life. Unable to let go of this final living piece of her husband, Millie reaches out to the transplant recipient, Amér, with the hope that some part of the heart still carries Lorenzo’s memories. As Amér ponders the ways in which this new heart is transforming him, he becomes entangled in the lives of Millie and her family, trapped by longings and obsessions that are not his own. Exquisite Agony is a play about the heart—its passions, its failures, and its ability to connect.

Nilo Cruz won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, making him the first Latino to be so honored. He is author of more than 13 plays and four translations. He studied theater first at Miami-Dade Community College and later in NYC under fellow Cuban Maria Irene Fornes. Fornes recommended Cruz to Paula Vogel, who was then teaching at Brown University, where Cruz received his M.F.A. in 1994. He was playwright-in-residence at the New Theatre in Coral Gables, FL, where he wrote Anna in the Tropics, which received the Pulitzer and Steinberg prizes in 2003. Its Broadway premiere in 2004 starred Jimmy Smitts in the lead role. Plays by Cruz have been presented by the Public Theater, NY Theatre Workshop, Pasadena Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory, The Alliance, New Theatre, Florida Stage and the Coconut Grove Playhouse. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and has taught playwriting at Brown University, the University of Iowa, Yale and University of Miami. In 2009, he received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career.