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Water by the Spoonful is a play by Quiara Alegria Hudes, directed by Henry Godinez, that explores the themes of families, the Iraq War, and addiction. The play is set in Philadelphia and follows the lives of Elliot Ortiz, a returning Iraq war veteran haunted by his past, Odessa Ortiz, Elliot's estranged mother struggling with drug addiction, and Yazmin Ortiz, Elliot's overachieving cousin. The play also delves into the topic of addiction and its recovery, with many characters dealing with addiction to drugs or other compulsions. The online world plays a significant role in the play, with Odessa moderating a chat room for recovering addicts.
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SETTING Philadelphia, Present Day
CHARACTERS
ELLIOT ORTIZ: MILITARY SERVICE
Elliot Ortiz’ Military Service
Light Armored Recon Battalion, 1st^ Marine Division, was one of the first Marines to enter Iraq in 2003. He was 18. He was injured the next year and received a Purple Heart, and he returned to Iraq for a second tour of duty after his recovery.
The Iraq War The Iraq War, also called the Second Persian Gulf War (2003–11), was a conflict in Iraq that consisted of two phases. The first of these was a brief, conventionally fought war in March–April 2003, in which a combined force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with smaller contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and rapidly defeated Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. It was followed by a longer second phase in which a U.S.-led occupation of Iraq was opposed by an insurgency. After violence began to decline in 2007, the United States gradually reduced its military presence in Iraq, formally completing its withdrawal in December 2011.
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
To understand the condition better, here’s what the National Institute of Mental Health has to say:
When in danger, it’s natural to feel afraid. This fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to prepare to defend against the danger or to avoid it. This “fight-or-flight” response is a healthy reaction meant to protect a person from harm. But in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this reaction is changed or damaged. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they’re no longer in danger.
PTSD develops after a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or the threat of physical harm. The person who develops PTSD may have been the one who was harmed, the harm may have happened to a loved one, or the person may have witnessed a harmful event that happened to loved ones or strangers.
PTSD was first brought to public attention in relation to war veterans, but it can result from a variety of traumatic incidents, such as mugging, rape, torture, being kidnapped or held captive, child abuse, car accidents, train wrecks, plane crashes, bombings, or natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes.
As a veteran of the Iraq War, Elliot Ortiz suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which in his case presents itself as appearances of a “ghost.” Because of PTSD, Elliot is literally haunted by his own past, as the ghost is a hallucination of the first person he killed in Iraq. PTSD is an increasingly common and accepted condition, especially in veterans, though PTSD can develop after any traumatic experience. (^) Actor Edgar Sanchez as Elliot Ortiz.
DRUG ADDICITON
and the addiction recovery process. The online community moderated by Odessa is one dedicated to recovering abusers of crack cocaine, and Elliot struggled with addiction to painkillers after his injury in Iraq.
Addiction Addiction is a condition that results when a person ingests a substance (alcohol, cocaine, nicotine) or engages in an activity (gambling) that can be pleasurable but the continued use of which becomes compulsive and interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work or relationships, or health. Users may not be aware that their behavior is out of control and causing problems for themselves and others.
The word addiction is used in several different ways. One definition describes physical addiction. This is a biological state in which the body adapts to the presence of a drug so that drug no longer has the same effect; this is known as tolerance. Because of tolerance, there is a biological reaction when the drug is withdrawn. Another form of physical addiction is the phenomenon of overreaction by the brain to drugs (or to cues associated with the drugs). An alcoholic walking into a bar, for instance, will feel an extra pull to have a drink because of these cues.
However, most addictive behavior is not related to either physical tolerance or exposure to cues. People compulsively use drugs, gamble, or shop nearly always in reaction to being emotionally stressed, whether or not they have a physical addiction. Since these psychologically based addictions are not based on drug or brain effects, they can account for why people frequently switch addictive actions from one drug to a completely different kind of drug, or even to a non-drug behavior. The focus of the addiction isn't what matters; it's the need to take action under certain kinds of stress. Treating this kind of addiction requires an understanding of how it works psychologically.
DRUG ADDICITON (CONT)
When referring to any kind of addiction, it is important to recognize that its cause is not simply a search for pleasure and that addiction has nothing to do with one's morality or strength of character. Experts debate whether addiction is a "disease" or a true mental illness, whether drug dependence and addiction mean the same thing, and many other aspects of addiction. Such debates are not likely to be resolved soon. But the lack of resolution does not preclude effective treatment.
Crack Cocaine's Effects on the Brain Crack cocaine is a strong central nervous stimulant that interferes with, and causes excess amounts of, dopamine in the brain. A neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and movement, dopamine is the neurotransmitter released as part of the brain's reward system. As a result, the psychological effects can be extremely reinforcing; after having tried crack cocaine, the user will rapidly develop an intense craving for the drug since the chemistry of the brain's reward system has been altered.
Long-Term Effects Prolonged crack cocaine abuse causes a number of problems, including:
SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITIES
support community for recovering cocaine addicts, and many of the characters in the production are regulars in the chat room.
While addiction recovery is a different process for everyone who goes through it, self-help groups are a common feature of recovery programs. While many of these groups meet in person (like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous), there is a growing number of online communities that operate in a similar way. Websites will run chat rooms or message boards for the members to share their stories and progress with other members, developing online support systems for recovering addicts. In the same way that AA and NA stress the importance of taking recovery one day at a time, the online chat rooms become places for members to report on their day to day progress towards sobriety.
In Court’s production, director Henry Godinez and the cast have chosen to explore how movement and contact can help make the relationships between the characters clear even when they are only interacting in the online world.
the play happens in one of these online chat rooms. This presents an unusual challenge for staging the script: the characters talk to each other, but they do so through an online medium. If it were to be staged in a fully realistic way, the characters would sit in front of computers, but that would not be visually interesting. In her introduction, Hudes recommends:^ Elliiot^ hacks into his mother’s online community.
FREE JAZZ
Free Jazz Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz composers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Each in their own way, free jazz musicians attempted to alter, extend, or break down the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features of jazz, such as fixed chord changes or tempos. While usually considered experimental and avant-garde, free jazz has also oppositely been conceived as an attempt to return jazz to its "primitive", often religious roots, and emphasis on collective improvisation.
Free jazz is most strongly associated with the 1950s innovations of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and the later works of saxophonist John Coltrane. Other important pioneers included Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Joe Maneri and Sun Ra. Although today "free jazz" is the generally used term, many other terms were used to describe the loosely defined movement, including "avant-garde", "energy music" and "The New Thing." During its early and mid-60s heyday, much free jazz was released by established labels such as Prestige, Blue Note and Impulse, as well as independents such as ESP Disk and BYG Actuel.
Yazmin Ortiz is an adjunct professor of music, probably drawing from Quiara Alegria Hudes’ own musical training. The Free Jazz movement and John Coltrane both feature prominently in the play, and Free Jazz and the musical concepts of consonance and dissonance influenced Hudes’ writing style throughout the script.
Actress Yadira Correa as Yazmin Ortiz.
JOHN COLTRANE
John Coltrane (1926 - 1967) was, after Charlie Parker, the most revolutionary and widely imitated saxophonist in jazz. Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina, where he learned to play E-flat alto horn, clarinet, and (at about the age of 15) alto saxophone.
mid-1960s. These controversial experiments attracted large audiences, and by 1965 he was surprisingly affluent. From autumn 1965 his search for new sounds resulted in frequent changes of personnel in his group. New members included Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane (his wife), Rashied Ali (a second drummer until Jones' departure), several drummers as seconds to Ali, and a number of African-influenced percussionists. In his final years and after his death, Coltrane acquired an almost saintly reputation among listeners and fellow musicians for his energetic and selfless support of young avant-garde performers, his passionate religious convictions, his peaceful demeanor, and his obsessive striving for a musical ideal. He died at the age
produced by David Chertok and Burrill Crohn, was issued in 1987.
Throughout the 1950s addiction to drugs and then alcoholism disrupted his career. With time, he overcame these problems and
celebrated this victory and the profound religious experience associated with it.
Coltrane turned to increasingly radical musical styles in the
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