Theater & Music Theater Past Faculty

Migdalia Cruz

Migdalia Cruz headshot

Photo by Deborah Lopez

About

Migdalia Cruz is an award-winning playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist of more than 60 works including: The Book of Miaou: Don’t Drink Everything Your Mother Pours YouEl Grito Del BronxSaltYellow EyesLatins In La-La LandDreams of Home, Miriam’s Flowers, and Frida, produced in venues—across the U.S. and abroad—including INTAR, BAM, Mabou Mines, Old Red Lion, National Theater of Greece, Houston Grand Opera, Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Teatro Vista, and CollaborAction. An alumna of New Dramatists, she is the recipient of several awards including the Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award, two NYFA grants, two NEAs, and a McKnight. Migdalia was nurtured by Sundance, the Lark, and by María Irene Fornés at INTAR. She was a writer-in-residence at Latino Chicago Theater Company from 1990-1998, premiering several plays including Miriam’s FlowersLucy Loves MeCigarettes & Moby-DickFurLunes LunaticoChe-Che-Che: a latin fugue in 5/8 time, and Lolita de Lares, which received a 20th anniversary production at Urban Theater Company in 2016. Migdalia has taught at Princeton (where she was also commissioned to write a piece for the students to honor her mentor, Maria Irene Fornés), NYU Tisch, and the Fornés Playwriting Workshop at Notre Dame University (Chicago), Yale, UNM, Brava, UC Riverside, and elsewhere. Among her over 25 published works, most recently, were two of her translations (Alaska and Sky on the Skin from the Mexíco/U.S. Word Exchange Project at the Lark, ed.by Caridad Svich). She is currently a mentor for the Latinx Playwrights’ Circle in NYC and the co-chair of the Playwriting Fellows Program at the Dramatists Guild Foundation. 

2019-20 Projects: FUR @Boundless Theater @NextDoor@NYTW, Teatro Dallas, & DePaul’s Theatre School; FRIDA @Long Beach Opera, @Atlanta Opera, @Anchorage Opera; Richard III @Young Vic (London), @Theatre Space North East (Sunderland, U.K.); Macbeth & Richard III in the PlayOn!Shakespeare Festival @CSC (NY); Never Moscow @U.of Evansville, IN. Her 2020 commissions:  The Flea(NY) for 2020: OH SAY CAN YOU SEE Project (It’s Free On
Wednesdays);
Clubbed Thumb/NYSCA (NY) for The FISH TANK Play; INTAR(NY) for LIVES OF THE NEW KIND OF SAINTS.