Quiara Alegría Hudes

“Daphne’s Dive is the kind of place ‘where everybody knows your name.’…Ms. Hudes has a supple feel for characterization and a wide-ranging sympathy for life’s waifs and strays. And like the characters on Cheers, the regulars at Daphne’s make up an informal family with whose triumphs and troubles we come to sympathize.” —New York Times

“A slow-burning, vibrantly sketched portrait of a scruffy North Philly booze joint run by love-scarred Daphne…Most bartenders listen to others’ problems, but Daphne’s cheerful reticence about her own demons makes us lean forward.” —Time Out New York

“Daphne’s Dive led me to this conclusion: I’m just not spending enough time in bars. The one depicted here is the sort of hangout where you go not so much to drink but rather to engage with your extended family through triumphs and tribulations. Not to mention breaking out into the occasional spontaneous dance party.” —Hollywood Reporter

“Quiara Alegría Hudes finds humor as well as tears in Daphne’s Dive, a vibrantly sketched portrait of a North Philadelphia watering hole that a diverse group of friends call home.” —NY1

A revolutionary trying to shake up the status quo. A child looking for refuge from a violent home. An artist in search of some trash to paint. You’ll find them all at Daphne’s Dive, a neighborhood bar in North Philly, where a collection of misfits gather for cold beer and warm company. Known for her acclaimed Elliot Trilogy, Quiara Alegría Hudes continues to grapple with what it means to be an outsider while searching for empathy and connection in Daphne’s Dive.

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Water by the Spoonful. She wrote the book for the Broadway musical In the Heights, which received a Tony Award for Best Musical and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Recent work includes the musical Miss You Like Hell.

A troubled teenager and her estranged mother—an undocumented Mexican immigrant on the verge of deportation—embark on a road trip and strive to mend their frayed relationship along the way. Combined with the musical talent of Erin McKeown, Hudes artfully crafts a story of the barriers and the bonds of family, while also addressing the complexities of immigration in today’s America.

Quiara Alegría Hudes’ stage adaptation of her much-lauded memoir is a joyous celebration of Puerto Rican womanhood in 1990s West Philadelphia.

In this memoir-turned-play, Hudes showcases a handful of key life moments that mark subtle changes in her sense of self and her place in the world. Interlaid between these vignettes are moments of song, dance, and ritual that evoke her boisterous girlhood in a house run by the Perez women. Through this piece, we come to understand the collaborative art that was Hudes’s coming of age, and the communal nature of autobiography.

“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.