Riverside Community Players still needs actors for Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz.

Winner of the  2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  The play is set in 1929 in Tampa, Florida, in a Cuban-American cigar factory, where cigars are rolled by hand and “lectors” are employed to read to the workers for the dual purpose of entertainment and education.  A new lector has arrived at the factory owned by Santiago and before long all are caught up in the passions elicited by his reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Rehearsals will start on December 8, 2008.  The play opens on January 23, 2009 and closes February8, 2009.  The play is being directed by Kathryn Gage. If you are interested, please call either the theatre (951) 369-1200 and leave a message for Kathryn.

Auditions were held on November 10 & 11, 2008 but the following parts are still open.  These are all major roles and important to the story.  There are only seven characters in the play.

• Cheche – (early 40s) Santiago’s ‘long-lost’ brother is more interested in modernizing the cigar factory than in stories told by the factory’s new lector.  His bitterness, stemming from the fact that his wife left him for a lector, is dangerous to everyone in the play.
• Palomo – (41) Conchita’s husband is a straightforward man whose machismo has made him take his wife for granted until she awakens jealousy within him by having an affair of her own with the new lector.
• Juan Julian – (38) He is the sensitive new lector who captivates the dreamers in Santiago’s factory and who spreads his own passion for romance and language to those who will embrace it. Ironically, his fair and pleasant-spirited nature brings out intense emotions in those around him.  He is murdered at the end by Cheche.