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“I found that Richard III laid a foundation for his 28th play, Macbeth, a beautifully crafted poetically precise play. I found that Shakespeare stole lines from himself in Richard III and placed them into Macbeth, as so many playwrights do. We repeat themes, steal feelings and relationships from past work that still haunt us. This further humanized this writer.” Migdalia Cruz, Playwright
Playwright
Migdalia Cruz
MIGDALIA CRUZ (she/her), the 2023 DGF Legacy (with Frank Chin) and 2025 Re-Focus/Roundabout (with William S. Yellowrobe) Playwright, is a Bronx-born playwright, lyricist, translator, and librettist with over 60 works performed in 150 venues across 40 cities in 12 countries. Her awards include the NEA, McKnight, NYSCA, and TCG/Pew, and she was named the 2013 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright. Cruz’s mentor María Irene Fornés at INTAR and her residency at Latino Chicago nurtured her voice. She co-chairs the DGF Playwriting Fellows, mentors the Latinx Playwrights’ Circle, was listed on The Kilroys Web 2023, and taught at Princeton, NYU, IU, and as founding member of the Fornés Institute’s Playwriting Workshop. Migdalia is an alumna of New Dramatists, and a member of The Tent, a theater for established and celebrated “vintage” playwrights. She was featured in: “Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre.” Her recent essays and interviews appeared in the publications: “Shakespeare And Latinidad,” “Diasporic Journeys: Interviews with Puerto Rican Writers in the United States,” “A History of Latinx Performing Arts in the U.S.,” “The Routledge Companion to Latiné Theatre and Performance,” and “Fornés In Context.” Her new anthology of plays “The Impossible Plays of Migdalia Cruz,” debuted October 2024, published by Tripwire Harlot Press.
Dramaturg
Ishia Bennison
Ishia Bennison has worked as an actor/ producer since she was seventeen. Her first introduction to Migdalia Cruz was in London when she produced and performed in Miriam’s Flowers, a wonderful play written by Migdalia. Little did we know that nearly 30 years later we’d have the pleasure of reuniting and working together on on Macbeth and Richard III for OSF. We’ve had a blast.
Theatre includes:
Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor, Mad World My Masters and Candide (RSC and national tour); Julius Caesar (Donmar, all female version); The Importance of Being Earnest (The Rose, Hong Kong Festival); Our Private Life (Royal Court); The Canterbury Tales (tour and The Rose), A Couple Of Poor, Polish Speaking Romanians(Soho Theatre); A New Way To Please You, Sejanus -His Fall, Speaking Like Magpies, Cymbeline, Measure for Measure (Royal Shakespeare Company); Bites (Bush Theatre); Strange Orchestra, Mother Courage (Orange Tree); Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (Manchester Library); Arabian Nights (Young Vic Company); Antony and Cleopatra (BAM New York), A Midsummer Night Dream (Brazil tour), Merry Wives (India tour), Richard III (Riverside Studios & The Tower of London) Poetry Or Bust, Samson Agonistes, Romeo and Juliet (Northern Broadsides); Medea (Lilian Baylis); Les Miserables (Nottingham Playhouse) Turcaret (Gate); One For The Road (Meridian Prods.); Educating Rita (Oxford Playhouse); Red Devils (Liverpool Playhouse).Television and Film includes:
Happy Valley – two seasons; New Tricks; Last Tango in Halifax; True Dare Kiss; At Home With The Braithwaites – four seasons; Holby City; Emmerdale; Coronation Street; Burnside; Love Hurts; Give And Take; Mother’s Day; Story Teller; Bread; Eastenders; Much Ado About Nothing; Mitch: A Family Affair; Kessler; Bid For Power; King David with Richard Gere; Anno Domini; The Awakening; Jesus Of Nazareth.Producer of 7 documentaries for BBC and Channel 4
In Print
Richard III
Playwright Migdalia Cruz breathes new life into Richard III.
Nuyorican playwright Migdalia Cruz unpacks and repositions Shakespeare’s Richard III for a twenty-first-century audience. She presents a contemporary English verse translation, faithfully keeping the poetry, the puns, and the politics of the play intact, with a rigorous and in-depth examination of Richard III—the man, the king, the outsider—who is still the only English king to have died in battle. In the Wars of the Roses, his Catholic belief in his country led to his slaughter at Bosworth’s Field by his Protestant rivals. In reimagining this text, Cruz emphasizes Richard III’s outsider status—exacerbated by his severe scoliosis, which twisted his spine—by punctuating the text with punk music from 1970s London. Cruz’s Richard is no one’s fool or lackey. He is a new kind of monarch, whose dark sense of humor and deep sense of purpose leads his charge against the society which never fully accepted him because he looked different.
