The company is currently invested in the Pícaro project, a physical theater take on the journey of a Central American immigrant. Cruz was awarded the 2011 Princess Grace Foundation Theater Fellowship Award, and the 2014 Arts and Science Council’s McColl award for the development of new socially engaged work. With the latter, he developed a community-powered contemporary circus company/show, The Nouveau Sud project, from and about the city of Charlotte and the evolving concept of what is often referred to as the New South. The Nouveau Sud project had its debut production in April 2016, and is an ongoing initiative with a new show that opened in the summer of 2017 titled Sûr in which the company explored the reality of a city that is immersed between deportations and police brutality. Cruz is the Assistant Professor of Physical Theater at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.