Water by the Spoonful (Revised TCG Edition)
eBook - ePub

Water by the Spoonful (Revised TCG Edition)

  1. 104 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Water by the Spoonful (Revised TCG Edition)

About this book

"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, Water by the Spoonful 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, Water by the Spoonful 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.

 

Water by the Spoonful 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 Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and concludes with The Happiest Song Plays Last.

 

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful, the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue. Her other works include Barrio Grrrl!, a children's musical; 26 Miles; Yemaya's Belly and The Happiest Song Plays Last, 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.

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Yes, you can access Water by the Spoonful (Revised TCG Edition) by Quiara Alegría Hudes in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & American Drama. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Scene Six
The chat room. Orangutan is online, seems upset.
ORANGUTAN: 2:38 A.M. Tuesday. The witching hour.
(Chutes&Ladders logs on.)
CHUTES&LADDERS: 1:38 P.M. Monday. The lunch hour.
ORANGUTAN: I’m in a gay bar slash internet café in the city of Sapporo. Deafening dance music.
CHUTES&LADDERS: Sure you should be in a bar, little monkey?
ORANGUTAN (Disappointed): I flew halfway around the world and guess what? It was still me who got off the plane. (Taking comfort) Sapporo is always open. The world turns upside down at night.
CHUTES&LADDERS: You’re in a city named after a beer sitting in a bar. Go home.
ORANGUTAN: Everything in this country makes sense but me. The noodles in soup make sense. The woodpecker outside my window every evening? Completely logical. The girls getting out of school in their miniskirts and shy smiles? Perfectly natural. I’m floating. I’m a cloud. My existence is one sustained out-of-body experience. It doesn’t matter if I change my shoes, there’s not a pair I’ve ever been able to fill. I’m a baby in a basket on an endless river. Wherever I go I don’t make sense there.
CHUTES&LADDERS: Hey, little monkey. How many days you got?
ORANGUTAN: I think day ninety-six is when the demons really come out to play.
CHUTES&LADDERS: Ninety-six? Girl, hang your hat on that.
ORANGUTAN: I really really really want to smoke crack.
CHUTES&LADDERS: Yeah, well don’t.
ORANGUTAN: Distract me from myself. What do you really really really want, Chutes&Ladders?
CHUTES&LADDERS: I wouldn’t say no to a new car—my Tercel is one sorry sight.
ORANGUTAN: What else?
CHUTES&LADDERS: Tuesday’s crossword. On Monday I’m done by the time I sit at my desk. I wish every day could be a Tuesday.
ORANGUTAN: What about your son? Don’t you really really really want to call him?
CHUTES&LADDERS: By all accounts, having me be a stranger these ten years has given him the best decade of his life.
ORANGUTAN: I’ve known you for how long?
CHUTES&LADDERS: Three Christmas Eves. When you logged on you were a stone-cold user. We sang Christmas carols online all night. Now you’ve got ninety days.
ORANGUTAN: Can I ask you a personal question? What’s your day job?
CHUTES&LADDERS: IRS. GS4 paper pusher.
ORANGUTAN: Got any vacation days?
CHUTES&LADDERS: A solid collection. I haven’t taken a vacation in ten years.
ORANGUTAN: Do you have money?
CHUTES&LADDERS: Enough to eat steak on Friday nights. Enough to buy pay-per-view boxing.
ORANGUTAN: Yeah, I bet that’s all the pay-per-view you buy. (Pause) Enough money to fly to Japan?
(Pause.)
CHUTES&LADDERS: You should know I’m fifty years old on a good day. I eat three and a half doughnuts for breakfast and save the remaining half for brunch. I have small hands, six toes on my left foot. And my face resembles a corgi.
ORANGUTAN: If I was looking for a hot screw I wouldn’t be logging on to this site.
CHUTES&LADDERS: Damn, was it something I said?
ORANGUTAN (With honest admiration): I’ve been on this planet for thirty-one years and you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s more sarcastic than I am yet still believes in God.
CHUTES&LADDERS (Taking the compliment): Says the agnostic.
ORANGUTAN: The atheist. Who is very envious of believers. My brain is my biggest enemy—always arguing my soul into a corner. (Pause) I like you. Come to Japan. We can go get an ice cream. I can show you the countryside.
CHUTES&LADDERS: I don’t have a passport. If my Tercel can’t drive there, I generally don’t go.
ORANGUTAN: Come save me in Japan. Be my knight in shining armor.
CHUTES&LADDERS: I’ll admit, I’m a dashing concept. If you saw my flesh and blood, you’d be disappointed.
ORANGUTAN: I see my flesh and blood every day and I’ve learned to live with the disappointment.
CHUTES&LADDERS: I’m the squarest of the square. I live in a square house on a square block watching a square box eating square-cut fries.
ORANGUTAN: I get it. You were the kid who colored inside the lines.
CHUTES&LADDERS: No, I was the kid who ate the crayons. Was. I went clean and all personality left my life. Flew right out the window. I had to take life on life’s terms. Messy, disappointing, bad shit happens to good people, coffee stains on my necktie, boring life.
ORANGUTAN: Maybe we could hang out and have a relationship that has very little to do with crack or addiction or history. We could watch DVDs and microwave popcorn and take walks on the waterfront while we gossip about celebrities. It could be the land of the living.
CHUTES&LADDERS: Stay in the box. Keep things in their place. It’s a simple, effective recipe for ten clean years.
ORANGUTAN: Forget simple. I want a goddamn challenge.
CHUTES&LADDERS: You’re in recovery and work in a foreign country. That’s a challenge.
ORANGUTAN: No. No it’s fucking not. Not if I just stay anonymous and alone. Like every day of my shit life so far. A friend, the kind that is nice to you and you are nice to in return. That would push the comfort zone. The invitation is open. Come tear my shyness open.
CHUTES&LADDERS: All right, now you’re being weird. Can we change the subject?
(Haikumom appears. She’s reading the newspaper.)
HAIKUMOM: Orangutan, cover your ears.
ORANGUTAN: Big Brother, always watching.
HAIKUMOM: Cover your ears, kiddo.
ORANGUTAN: That doesn’t really work online.
HAIKUMOM: Okay, Chutes&Ladders, can we g-chat? One on one?
ORANGUTAN: Come on! No talking behind backs.
HAIKUMOM: Fine. Chutes&Ladders, you listening?
CHUTES&LADDERS...

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Production History
  8. Characters
  9. Scene One
  10. Scene Two
  11. Scene Three
  12. Scene Four
  13. Scene Five
  14. Scene Six
  15. Scene Seven
  16. Scene Eight
  17. Scene Nine
  18. Scene Ten
  19. Scene Eleven
  20. Scene Twelve
  21. Scene Thirteen
  22. Scene Fourteen
  23. Scene Fifteen
  24. About the Author