Water By the Spoonful
Years after his honorable discharge, a Puerto Rican veteran is surrounded by the North Philadelphia demons he tried to escape in the service. Meanwhile, in a chat room, a group of recovering addicts forge the safe haven they don’t have in their physical communities. Birth families splinter and online families collide in Philly, Puerto Rico, Japan, and California, all set to Coltrane’s free jazz.
Cast Requirements
3 women
4 men
Honors
Winner: 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Finalist: Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association New Play Award
Publisher
World Premiere opening night at Hartford Stage Company on October 28, 2011.
Press
“All the characters in Quiara Alegria Hudes’ compassionate follow-up to “Elliot: A Soldier's Fugue” (a Pulitzer finalist) are seeking a kind of visa -- one that will allow them to make it to a safe haven in a messed-up world. Everyone in the play is living day to day -- or spoonful by spoonful, to echo Hudes’ poignant metaphor -- enabled, hindered, and supported by an ever-interrelated reach of family and friends. The play is a combination poem, prayer and app on how to cope in an age of uncertainty, speed and chaos. When cyber meets the real world, anger gives way to forgiveness and resistance becomes redemption; the heart of the play opens up and the waters flow freely.”
-Variety
Production and Development History
Commissioned: Hartford Stage Company.
Workshop: Hartford Stage Company.