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www.portlandohserver.com
Wednesday . July 9. 2014
Odessa (Vilma Silva) monitors the conversation in her online chat room in ‘W ater Rv the c ™ n n f , - r*, n
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community service
PHOTO BY J enny G raham .
Play about broken relationships and other works highlight Oregon Shakespeare Festival
by
D arleen O rtega
There's nothing more important than
family. I would never make the mistakes my
mother made. People don't change. Much
of what gets expressed about family and
community in life and popular culture is full
of absolutist thinking like that reflected in
such statements. But the reality of commu
nity is much messier, less linear.
So is the world of family and community
I
reflected in “Water By the Spoonful,” a play
by Puerto Rican-American playwright Quiara
Alegría Hudes that played at the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival this past spring and
resumes in September.
In the world of this play, communities
(including fami lies) are made up only of bro
ken people. Young Elliot, recently returned
from the Iraq war with a leg injury, is under
employed and caring for his aunt Ginny, who
raised him when his biological mother(Ginny’s
sister Odessa) couldn’t. Ginny is everything
Odessa is not — a true matriarch connected
to place and community. Elliot seethes with
nursed anger toward Odessa, a recovering
crack addict living “one notch above squa
lor.”
But the woman we meet isn’t the one
frozen in Elliot’s memory. Odessa, who works
as a part-time janitor, founded and adminis
ters a chat room for recovering addicts, and
in that cyber world, she is a mama. Using the
handle “Haikumom,” she keeps the conver
sations safe, prods the participants to take
care of themselves, and creates space for
people at all stages of recovery.
Mother and son, however disconnected
in life, are connected in ways neither recog-
continued
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on page