THEMES
"In Water by the Spoonful, I knew a few things before I started writing the play. [. . . ] First that the play would be about recovery. Second, that some of it would take place in an online chat room. And third, that the subject material would be about redemption--even if it's only drop by drop." Hudes, interview with Frisina, Secondstage Newsletter, 2012.
"I think it is, in some ways, a play about finding love and grace and companionship in unexpected places." Hudes, in Jeff Lunden, "A Vet's Haunted Homecoming in Water by the Spoonful," NPR January 8, 2013.
SOURCES
"Elliot is based on Hudes' cousin, also named Elliot. She says she went to visit him on a military base shortly after he returned from Iraq. 'I just remember the instant I saw him, there was just something changed in his eye,' Hudes says, 'You know, he was still absolutely the same young clown of a cousin I had always known and had grown up with, loving, but there was something different. And I felt that I might never understand it. And that's the simple spark that it came from.' " (Jeff Lunden, "A Vet's Haunted Homecoming in Water by the Spoonful," NPR January 8, 2013.)
CONTEXTS
From Hudes' interview with Kathleen Potts, Guernica, July 2012:
"Art is the hammer that shapes history. I don't think history is just told by history books and newspapers, but the documents of a culture saying. 'This is what was here. This is what was here." That's my hammer." (7-8)
"My family roots are in activism and I think that informed a lot of the choices I make as a writer." (2)
"The history of the body is very much a part of how I grew up. My mother is a kind of spiritualist. She was born in Arecibo . . . She had this gift [as a child, of foretelling peoples' deaths, it was a terrifying part of her childhood] but there was a strong enough community of local herbalists-curanderos--that helped her" (5)
"I grew up steeped in powerful religious traditions"--santería, quakerism, lutheranism, catholicism
"People ask me: 'Do I consider myself a Latino writer? What does it mean to be Latino?" Those are very strange questions in a three minute response, but feminism is easier because it's just an ideology, the way I live my life. And absolutely in the most political sense I try to sit down and write very strong female roles" (9)
"In Water by the Spoonful, I knew a few things before I started writing the play. [. . . ] First that the play would be about recovery. Second, that some of it would take place in an online chat room. And third, that the subject material would be about redemption--even if it's only drop by drop." Hudes, interview with Frisina, Secondstage Newsletter, 2012.
"I think it is, in some ways, a play about finding love and grace and companionship in unexpected places." Hudes, in Jeff Lunden, "A Vet's Haunted Homecoming in Water by the Spoonful," NPR January 8, 2013.
SOURCES
"Elliot is based on Hudes' cousin, also named Elliot. She says she went to visit him on a military base shortly after he returned from Iraq. 'I just remember the instant I saw him, there was just something changed in his eye,' Hudes says, 'You know, he was still absolutely the same young clown of a cousin I had always known and had grown up with, loving, but there was something different. And I felt that I might never understand it. And that's the simple spark that it came from.' " (Jeff Lunden, "A Vet's Haunted Homecoming in Water by the Spoonful," NPR January 8, 2013.)
CONTEXTS
From Hudes' interview with Kathleen Potts, Guernica, July 2012:
"Art is the hammer that shapes history. I don't think history is just told by history books and newspapers, but the documents of a culture saying. 'This is what was here. This is what was here." That's my hammer." (7-8)
"My family roots are in activism and I think that informed a lot of the choices I make as a writer." (2)
"The history of the body is very much a part of how I grew up. My mother is a kind of spiritualist. She was born in Arecibo . . . She had this gift [as a child, of foretelling peoples' deaths, it was a terrifying part of her childhood] but there was a strong enough community of local herbalists-curanderos--that helped her" (5)
"I grew up steeped in powerful religious traditions"--santería, quakerism, lutheranism, catholicism
"People ask me: 'Do I consider myself a Latino writer? What does it mean to be Latino?" Those are very strange questions in a three minute response, but feminism is easier because it's just an ideology, the way I live my life. And absolutely in the most political sense I try to sit down and write very strong female roles" (9)