“How many plays make us long for grace?
Water by the Spoonful
by Quiara Hudes is such a rare play; it is a yearning, funny, deeply sad and deeply lyrical piece, a worthy companion to Hudes’s
Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue
. The play infects us with the urge to find connection within our families and communities and remains with us long after we’ve left the theater.” –Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
How I Learned to Drive
“Hudes’s writing is controlled and graceful. Each of the play’s 15 short scenes is perfectly balanced, the language both lyrical and lucid.” –Richard Zoglin,
Time
“For a drama peopled by characters who have traveled a long way in the dark,
gives off a shimmering, sustaining warmth. Ms. Hudes writes with such empathy and vibrant humor about people helping one another to face down their demons that regeneration and renewal always seem to be just around the corner.” –Charles Isherwood,
New York Times
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
,
is “a rich, brilliant montage of American urban life that is as dazzling to watch as it is difficult to look away from” (
Associated Press
).
Somewhere in Philadelphia, Elliot has returned from Iraq and is struggling to find his place in the world. Somewhere in a chat room, recovering addicts forge an unbreakable bond of support and love. The boundaries of family and community are stretched across continents and cyberspace as birth families splinter and online families collide.
is a heartfelt and poetic meditation on lives on the brink of redemption and self-discovery during a time of heightened uncertainty, “as startling and innovative and human on the page as on the stage” (Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-Winning author). Hudes’s cycle of three plays began with
(Pulitzer Prize finalist) and concludes with
The Happiest Song Plays Last
.
Quiara Alegría Hudes
is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
, the Tony Award-winning musical
In the Heights
and the Pulitzer Prize finalist
. Her other works include
Barrio Grrrl!
a children’s musical
;
26 Miles
Yemaya’s Belly
and
, the third piece in her acclaimed trilogy. Hudes is on the board of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, which produced her first play in the tenth grade. She now lives in New York with her husband and children.