| Water by the Spoonful | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Quiara Alegría Hudes |
| Characters | Elliot Ortiz Yazmin Ortiz Odessa Ortiz Fountainhead Chutes & Ladders Orangutan A Ghost |
| Date premiered | October 20, 2011 |
| Place premiered | Hartford Stage Hartford, Connecticut |
| Original language | English |
| Series | Elliot Trilogy |
Water by the Spoonful is a play by Quiara Alegría Hudes as the second part of the Elliot Trilogy. This play is released five years after the first section of the trilogy, Elliot A Soldier's Fugue, comes out.[1] The story is set in both the virtual and physical world in Philadelphia, Japan, and Puerto Rico.
The play won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.[2]
Water by the Spoonful is the second part of a trilogy that began with Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue and concludes with The Happiest Song Plays Last.[3] The first part of the trilogy is "about a young Marine, Elliot Ortiz, coming to terms with his time in Iraq and his father's and grandfather's service in Vietnam and Korea".[4] Water by the Spoonful takes place several years after, Elliot, a veteran, has returned to his home in Philadelphia after being wounded while serving in Iraq. The play depicts the aftermath of the death of Ginny, Elliot's adoptive mother. As Elliot and his cousin Yaz attempt to process their loss, Ginny's sister Odessa, Elliot's biological mother, bonds with other recovering addicts on the Narcotics Anonymous support chat room she moderates.
Picking up seven years after Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, war-wounded Elliot Ortiz has returned to his home town of Philadelphia, where he now works at a sandwich shop and cares for his ailing aunt Ginny, who raised him. He is coping with recurring bouts of posttraumatic stress disorder, characterized by visions of the apparition of a man who continually offers a hand and repeats an Arabic phrase. Elliot's cousin Yazmin, a Swarthmore College music professor in the middle of a divorce, introduces him to Professor Aman, from Swarthmore's Arabic Studies department. Elliot hopes to decipher the phrase the ghost repeats, but Aman, intrigued by Elliot's refusal to explain the phrase's origin, offers an exchange: he will translate the phrase if Elliot agrees to contact a filmmaker friend of his who is making a documentary about the Iraq War. When Elliot accepts, Aman reveals that the phrase translates to "Can I please have my passport back?".
Odessa, who is Elliot's birth mother and Ginny's sister, is a recovering crack addict who uses the alias Haikumom to moderate an anonymous online message board for recovering addicts – such as Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders. Orangutan, who has worried Haikumom and Chutes&Ladders by not logging into the site for three months, eases their minds by posting that she is ninety days sober and has moved to Japan.
The calming interchange on the message board is compromised when Fountainhead, a wealthy Philadelphian and addict-in-denial, sows discord. Odessa wants to welcome him, but Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders doubt his intentions, especially when he pleads for a solution to his addiction that does not involve telling his wife. Orangutan also encourages Chutes&Ladders to visit her in Japan, but he refuses, fearing the awkwardness of the meeting and the break from the routine he has built for himself might threaten his ten-year sobriety.
Ginny passes away, leaving Elliot and Yazmin with limited funds for her funeral. As they struggle to gather money from the family, Odessa meets Fountainhead in person at a café to discuss rehab and treatment options. Yazmin and Elliot arrive and confront Odessa for her failure to contribute financially. Elliot, enraged by her disloyalty to her own family, reveals to Fountainhead that Odessa also had a daughter, who died of dehydration from the flu when she was two years old. He openly blames Odessa, claiming that she was too busy getting high on crack to give his sister the "water by the spoonful" she needed to survive. Shamed, Odessa gives Elliot permission to pawn her personal computer for Ginny's funeral expenses. He and Yazmin go to Odessa's apartment to retrieve it, and Elliot logs in and poses as her on the message board, cruelly insulting Orangutan. When Yazmin grabs the keyboard to apologize and explains that it is Haikumom's son using the computer, Orangutan surprises them by revealing that Haikumom has always spoken very highly of Elliot on the site, begrudging her lack of presence in his life due to her addiction.
Orangutan posts that she plans to visit her birth parents' address, but Chutes&Ladders vehemently attempts to dissuade her, telling her that no good can come of it and the emotion of the visit might make her want to use again. Orangutan disagrees, arguing that she prefers uncertainty about the future to Chutes&Ladders' strict routine, and leaves to visit her parents. Overnight, Odessa relapses and overdoses, and the hospital calls Fountainhead, whom she listed as an emergency contact for reasons he cannot fathom. In the morning, Orangutan logs back on and reveals that she did not actually board the train, but Chutes&Ladders responds by saying that he has decided to face his fears and has bought a ticket to Japan. Fountainhead then enters the chat with the news about Odessa, and Chutes&Ladders convinces him that it is now his duty to take care of her. Fountainhead agrees and calls his wife, telling her where to find the message board so she can read and understand what he has been facing.
Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders finally meet in person in Japan. Yazmin and Elliot scatter Ginny's ashes in Puerto Rico. Yazmin plans to purchase Ginny's house to start her family there, while Elliot vows to pursue his acting dream in Los Angeles.
The play was published in 2012 by Theatre Communications Group.[21] Hudes had previously won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical for In the Heights.[22]