By Quiara Alegría Hudes
Directed by Geoff Packard

Yazmin Ortiz has been spinning her wheels in academia as an adjunct professor of music when the death of a prominent family member brings her back to the barrio and to her cousin, Elliot Ortiz, a returned Iraq War veteran who struggles to deal with the memories of the war he left behind. Odessa Ortiz, Elliot’s mother and a recovering addict, is the founder and administrator of an online chatroom for other recovering addicts, helping them stay on the straight and narrow. Odessa’s online chatroom brings people together for comfort and support who may have never met otherwise, as her real-life family is splintering at a rapid pace. Inventive and timely, Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful is a powerful, compassionate look at the meaning of family, and the burdens we must carry to protect it.

Water by the Spoonful gets its name from the restorative power of water. The play was commissioned by Hartford Stage while Quiara Alegría Hudes (who also wrote the book for the Tony Award-winning In The Heights) was an Aetna New Voices Fellow. The play debuted in October, 2011 to strong reviews, with one critic describing it as “one of the best new plays I’ve seen in years” (Frank Rizzo, The Hartford Courant). It received a similar welcome when it opened Off-Broadway in 2013, and won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2012. “A combination poem, prayer, and app on how to cope in an age of uncertainty, speed, and chaos” (Variety), Water by the Spoonful is a thought-provoking and heartwarming piece about finding and granting forgiveness, to yourself and others

Water by the Spoonful contains strong language and sensitive themes including PTSD, addiction, and suicide. Audience discretion is advised.