In 1999, she was named the first Sackler Artist in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut where she worked on Featherless Angels her commissioned play about children in war torn countries.

Cruz also worked with María Irene Fornés at INTAR'S HPRL (Hispanic Playwrights-in-Residence Laboratory) from 1984–1991, a professional workshop for Latino/a writers in New York City.

Cruz was profoundly influenced by Fornés and expressed her gratitude in several short plays, essays, and poems, including "A Double Haiku for Irene Because She Detests the Ordinary From Her Eternal Fan, Migdalia:" In six lines or less – I must honor the teacher who gave me the moon.

[6] One of her most profound experiences was in 2007, working with the experimental theater company, Mabou Mines, and one of its founders, Ruth Maleczech, on a floating play on a barge in the East River, an echo to Walt Whitman's "Song of New York" 100 years later, a love letter to the post-9/11 survival spirit of New York City, called "Song for New York: What Women Do While Men Sit Knitting", written in five parts, one for each borough, by five women poets—Cruz wrote the Bronx song: Da Bronx Rocks/From the Country to the Country of the Bronx, with composer Lisa Gutkin of The Klezmatics.

[7] Cruz has taught and lectured across the country and abroad in community centers, theaters, and schools, from junior high to graduate level, at NYU, Princeton, Earlham, UNT, Mission Cultural Center & Intersection for the Arts (San Francisco), UC Riverside, Amherst, Lake Erie College, UNM (Albuquerque), Brown, Monarch Theater at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club & P.S.

Scenes and Monologues from MIRIAM’S FLOWERS, THE HAVE-LITTLE, FRIDA, LUCY LOVES ME, RUSHING WATERS, TELLING TALES & LATINS IN LA-LA LAND: The work is referenced in several scholarly texts, in articles and interviews by Tiffany Ana Lopez (UCR), Jorge Huerta (UCSD), Analola Santana (U.of Florida), Alberto Sandoval (Mt.

Alexis Greene (Smith & Kraus Books, 2001); Chicanas/Latinas In American Theatre: A history of Performance, by Elizabeth C. Ramirez (Indiana University Press, 2000); Latinas On Stage: Criticism and Practice, eds.

In Spanish, the work is referenced in: ME LLAMAN DESDE ALLÁ, by Rosalina Perales, Impresora Soto Castillo, S.A., 2010; Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña/ARTWORKS/NEA, TEATRO PUERTORRIQUEÑA EN ESTADOS UNIDOS, Las flores de Miriam, translated by Roberto Irizarry, with notes by Rosalina Perales, 2011; & in OLLANTAY THEATER MAGAZINE's Puerto Rican Theater Issue, which includes an essay about MIRIAM’S FLOWERS by Roberto Irizarry and other scholarly essays by Rosalina Perales which reference the work, including Spanish translations of 3 of the TALES: Sand, Fire & Jesus, v. XVIII, n.35-36, Fall, 2010.