For Further Discussion

The questions below may be used to stimulate discussion before and after the play and to provide classroom reading, writing, research and performance activities. Each item supports a component of the Florida Sunshine State Standards in Theatre, Language Arts or Social Studies for grades 9-12.

Look up the definition of “tradition.” List some examples of traditions in your own life or the lives of other people. What traditions seem to be the most important in today’s society? After you see the play, list the traditions that are mentioned by the characters. Write a brief essay that compares and/or contrasts modern traditions and those important to the characters in the play. [LA.B.1.4]

What influence does history have on the tradition of hand-rolled cigars? What examples from the play support your answer? [SS.A.1.4]

In the first scene of the play, the women describe several important qualities that make a good lector. What are those qualities? Pick one of the passages from Anna Karenina that the lector reads to the workers. “Perform” the passage as though you were a highly qualified lector and as though you were a very inexperienced lector. Discuss the reasons for why the qualifications the women mention are important, given the circumstances of setting, time period and tradition. [TH.A.1.4, TH.A.2.4 and TH.E.1.4]

Most workers in the Cuban cigar factories supported the decision to hire a lector. Write from the point of view of one of these workers as though you are forced to vote on whether to keep or fire a lector. Make a strong argument for why it is important to keep a lector (think about the reasons in the play as well as one of the following factors: social, cultural, economic, and environmental). Now pretend that you are one of the workers, like Cheché in the play, who wants to fire the lector. Again, defend your reasons. [SS.B.2.4, LA.A.2.4, and LA.B.2.4]

Below are specific moments from the play. What is significant about these moments? What, if anything, do these moments symbolize?
[TH.D.1.4]

a. Santiago refuses to come to the factory until he has the money to pay back his debt to Cheché.

b. Conchita wishes to cut her hair like Clara Bow and take on a lover.

c. Marela writes the lector’s name on a piece of paper and placed it in a glass of water with brown sugar and cinnamon. Later she admits that she also saves little “moments” in a jar.

d. Cheché brings a machine into the factory

e. The passages of Anna Karenina the lector reads to the workers

What components of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression and Socialism resonate or are foreshadowed in Anna in the Tropics? [SS.A.3.4 and SS.A.5.4]

How did the use of machinery in Cuban Cigar factories expand and/or divide cultures? [SS.B.1.4]