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Quiara Alegría Hudes’s 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.
“Quiara’s in touch with spirits…This is a woman who went into playwriting because she sensed that her family stories—those in Puerto Rico, those in Philadelphia—would fade if she did not give them language.”
—Lin-Manuel Miranda
“My Broken Language honors the many women in Hudes’s maternal line. A tender collision of scene and image…There’s a sincere attempt to find a theatrical language that captures the love and joy and pain of learning, that celebrates the grandmother, mother, aunts, and cousins from whom Hudes learned. This is at its core a memory play, and to remember means not only to recall, but also to piece back together.”
—Alexis Soloski, New York Times
“Quiara Alegría Hudes’s impressionistic My Broken Language feels more like a party than a play: a family photo album come to vivid, joyous life. Hudes struggles to understand her place as she navigates two worlds, two cultures, two languages. Art is the key to her self-integration, and even if we don’t grasp every detail, we’re invited to witness her ritualistic tribute to the loved ones who shaped her.”
—Raven Snook, Time Out New York
“Probing, intelligent, and earnest…What makes this an original play and not a regurgitated version of her memoir is the implication that an autobiography is common property, not a house behind a fence. Others’ real lives, their true personalities—call them spirits—shiver through us, leaving their mark. The arts we attend to—literary, religious, choreographic, conversational—are what, in the end, make us who we are and set us on our way.”
—Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker
Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of Water by the Spoonful, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; writer of the book for In the Heights, winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and the screenwriter of Vivo. Her works have been performed on and Off-Broadway and around the world.