About the Play:

Finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue is a full-length drama by Quiara Alegria Hudes. Tracing the legacy of war through three generations of a Puerto Rican family, the play focuses on nineteen-year-old Elliot Ortiz, a recently anointed hometown hero who returns from the war in Iraq with a leg injury and a difficult question: Will he go back to war a second time? While on leave, Elliot learns the stories of his father and grandfather who served in Korea and Vietnam before him.

Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue is a multi-generational look at war through the eyes of a Puerto Rican family. At the age of eighteen, Philadelphian Elliot Ortiz joined the Marines and was shipped off to Iraq. By the age of nineteen, he received the Purple Heart. On leave to recover from his wounds, Elliot returns a hero to the city of Brotherly Love. As Elliot comes to terms with his own memories of war, the military experiences of his father and grandfather come to light, proving that history often repeats itself in interesting ways. As Elliot's tale moves back in time, the stories of his father, mother and grandfather move forward until past and present collide, creating a connection of love, beauty and rebirth from the destructive nature of war. Melding a poetic dreamscape with a stream-of-consciousness narrative, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue takes us on an unforgettable journey across time and generations. Lyrically tracing the legacy of war on a single Puerto Rican family, this Pulitzer Prize finalist is the first instalment in Hudes' acclaimed trilogy, which also includes the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winner Water by the Spoonful.

Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue premiered in 2006 at The Culture Project in New York City and was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. The play enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres, and is regularly performed in college theatre productions.

Cast: 1 woman, 3 men

What people say:

"Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue is that rare and rewarding thing: a theatre work that succeeds on every level, while creating something new… Without ever invoking current politics, Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue, manages to be a deeply poetic, touching and often funny indictment of the war in Iraq." — The New York Times

""In Quiara Alegria Hudes' intriguing new play, the title character…shares what it's like to be a Marine in Iraq…Simple, poignant and achingly evocative, these sequences are both utterly realistic and profoundly moving." — Time Out New York

"A lush and evocative tone poem about the way the landscape of the soul is transformed by war." — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About the Playwright:

Quiara Alegría Hudes is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright and author. After graduating from public school in Philadelphia, she went on to receive a B.A. in music cum laude from Yale University before earning an M.F.A. in playwriting from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel, and her work often merges the two disciplines.