Because you are playing Elliot in the third play, you have as resources both the scripts for the two previous plays (Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue and Water by the Spoonful ) to fill in the backstory of your character and to see how they are being staged. What did you learn from the scripts and the two productions?

It’s interesting in my mind because I looked at the productions as a whole than say as individual performances. I got more of an overall sense of how each production would bring life to Quiara’s words. I had no idea how Elliot would work. I thought that was going to be the most challenging one because of the format; because of the way the fugue itself works. I was looking at it more from a directorial perspective. Water, I’d never seen a live production of it – the wonderful dynamic of being in two different worlds and the internet world. That is a huge challenge in and of itself. There’s a community there, but they are spread out and different locations. Those are the things that really stood out from the other two productions.

Did seeing the performances of the other actors steer you in one direction versus another for your portrayal?

If anything it reinforced the license that it could be entirely my own. It wasn’t like a relay race where we’re handing it off from one to the other. I think it would have been interesting if Center Theatre Group and Latino Theatre Company would have partnered more to see if that is something that would have created more of a common thread. That is something that stands out in a sense that the three of us are all very different.

Quiara, in speaking of her trilogy, has said that the Puerto Rican family story is truly the American family story. Do you agree?

She hit the nail on the head with that one. Let’s be honest, it could be any different culture. And I’m not trying to diminish the Puerto Rican element of it. But it could have been a Venezuelan family, a Nigerian family. It is representative of living in the confines of the United States and the seeds that have been sown and what’s grown out of that earth.

Elliot has a line in the second act of Happiest Song where he says, “You do have a choice. Choose to be something.” How have Elliot’s choices gotten him to where he is in the play?

That’s his mantra. There are a number of lines in the play that really speak to that. Like where he talks during one of the conversations with his cousin that he’s out there to make his mom’s memory proud. Choose to be something – that encapsulates the actual person and the person that Quiara has created three plays around.

Some of his choices in the plays are not pleasant and, in fact, have been problematic since the first play. Does Elliot come to accept the ramifications of his actions by the end of this play?

There really is no resolution. I think closure is an interesting word that gets used when terrible events happen to communities, town or countries, but I don’t think it’s necessarily tangible. Everyone suffers, grieves or struggles differently. There’s not a nice bow put at the end of everything at the end of Happiest Song. You don’t know. But there has to be an acknowledgement of what you’ve done in the past as you try to move forward.

What has the character of Elliot taught you?

I always had the idea that the things that you have, the things you carry, would be weighing on your shoulders. I think the character has taught me that it’s not going to weigh you down as much as it is going to walk side by side with you. It’s like your actions are your shadows that follow you.

What has Elliot Ruiz taught you?

That I don’t take enough chances in life. The brief interactions I’ve had with him are pretty astounding. He’s a really good raconteur. It’s surprising that he hasn’t written any of his stories or entered The Moth. There’s no way you could listen to his stories and not feel like you’ve gotten some sort of life lesson. You want to encourage your kids to be that fearless and soak up every drop of life just because you never know.

To see Part 1 on this series go here.

To see Part 2 of this series go here.

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This isn’t your first experience with Water by the Spoonful. [He previously played the same part in a 2016 production.] How has your perception of Elliot’s journey in the play evolved since you first tackled the role?

I was too young to understand this thematic chord that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. Elliot’s journey is similar to mine. I was taking to Elliot Ruiz about that time and just like him, we were so muddled and blinded by anger. It wasn’t something we could reflect on. Now because of time and my own healing, it’s interesting to go back and visit this role. Particularly his relationship with his mother and his relationship with his addiction, his desire to change and become a man and let go of all the things that hold him back.

How similar were your own experiences?

In my journey it’s coming to terms with my parents. They did the best they could and the best they knew how. Issues with abandonment; feeling that your parents chose something over you. I spent a lot of my 20s trying to find ways to mask that pain and push that aside without allowing myself to understand that. Addiction, that’s what I was dealing with trying to run away from the pain.

Playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes has referred to her cousin Elliot as being like Will Smith’s Fresh Prince of BelAir. But post-Iraq she saw a pain in his eyes that wasn’t previously there. Is that how you see him?

Totally. There’s this great scene that Will Smith has, one of his best performances, but it speaks volumes to who he was. It was a scene with his father. You watch stories like Elliot and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and they have all this humor and lightness. But deep down inside they are hurting. They mask it. 

When you meet Elliot Ruiz, you’d never think he carries this with him because he’s so good at masking it – he knows how to endure war.  But deep down he’s still carrying it. At the opening night party he was talking about his mom, his journey of forgiving her and bringing her back into his life. You can see it was still a work in progress. 

Isn’t that an awful concept? The idea of “enduring war?” [Note: There is a spoiler in the answer. Please skip if you don’t want to know part of what happens in the play.]

But it’s something he’s learned how to cope with. He has this courage. He learned how to move forward despite this pain. In the play, being a part of his sister dying and the mother not helping because she was getting high…that’s war. That’s something he should never have had to do. That survival tactic was so preconditioned with him before he left for Iraq. It’s still tragic he has to do that.

How much do the two plays that sandwich this one help inform the arc of this character for you?

When you play a character in a play, you understand him only in that present moment. Because there’s a trilogy you get to follow his arc, where he came from and who he becomes. It’s dope. It was tricky because I didn’t want to pay too much attention to the other storylines. The first play was important to understand the idea of what kind of man he wanted to become. The final play I only read bits and pieces because I didn’t want it to influence me too much for the Elliot I was developing.

In the play, Yazmin talks about the role of dissonance in John Coltrane’s music. What role does dissonance play in your life?

Life is messy. Life is loud. Life is chaotic. Like dissonance you can hear one chord and another that’s so sharp, but that’s what life is. You have pretty notes and then ugly notes. What I’m learning is that in itself is music. No matter how chaotic the sound may be, it’s life and you have to make peace with it. That’s your song and that’s what you carry on for the rest of your life. You have to come to peace with the song that is yours.

To see Part 1 of this series, please go here.

Photo Credit: Craig Schwartz

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In an interview Quiara refers to her cousin as being similar to Will Smith’s character in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Is that how you see him, particularly as written in the play?

I see Elliot just as a very charming, socially adept, very driven person. He always has a smile on his face. He’s just slick. Life doesn’t bother him. He has life at his fingertips. He’s just young and full of life and very youthful. When I met him I would never have known he’d gone to war.

You looked at youtube videos of Elliot Ruiz as part of your research. This was before you met him. What did you glean from the videos you saw about the man who inspired your character?

I knew what type of person he was. He was promoting his movie to his high school and he was talking about his leg injury and how doctors told him he’d be walking with a cane for the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to let this physical cripplement, both physically and mentally, stop him from being who he knows he is. He was just so confident that he could do it because he knew the only thing holding him back was mental. He wants to give back and he wants to help. You can more than what society thinks you are. Veterans are put into this bubble that they are all hurting or unstable. That’s not true. They’re just as human as we are and deserve the same, if not more, respect because of their sacrifice. That’s why the play is so relevant. War is not good. The damage it does to the person himself and his family and how they have to deal with it…it’s ugly.

Did you read the two plays that follow Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue and did that help you in creating your performance?

I actually read Water by the Spoonful first. I went up for it and didn’t get it. Then I went up for Elliot. The whole trilogy is a fugue. It’s a melody on top of another melody on top of another melody. You are taking someone out of their environment and it’s the loss of one’s self and trying to find himself. The first play establishes what happens to this kid when war comes knocking. The second is about loss and addiction and recovery. Then you have the third one which is redemption. I would love to play the other [Elliot’s]. That would be so awesome.

What, if any, personal connection do you have to Elliot and his story?

In my life my mother was homeless and was pregnant with me and living on the street. She found this family in East LA that took us in and raised me and my little brother. They took in four children out of the goodness of their hearts and raised them to believe that they could do whatever they wanted as long as they worked hard. I didn’t know about gangs and drugs because I was raised by this family that kept that from me. This woman raised me and taught me ‘don’t be the thing that makes it worse.’ She passed away on October 1st. 

But the parallels in Elliot and myself are very clear. We are the same guy. If I had enlisted I’d be the same. In order to do justice to this character, I had to play myself and put myself in that situation. How would I react given the language and the story and how would I move in that trajectory? A lot of what you see on stage is not me playing a character, it’s me being my sincere self.

Three generations of Elliot’s family are depicted in Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue, Elliot, his father and his grandfather. All of them have been or are in the military. Yet you don’t have dialogue with the other actors. How do you create that sense of family on stage without talking to each other?

There is this bond that they are connected, but also they are connected ways that are unspoken. This bond doesn’t need words. You know that bond they have with each other. They need to make each other proud, to be thankful for having another chance to get to know more about your father and to know you love him and you are thankful for him. And the same for the other that he got to raise such an independent strong man. His father taught him how to be a man in this society and what the responsibility is in that. I’m sure many people going in watching this play can understand the bond between Elliot and his father. That’s what makes this story more relevant – people have someone like that. They know somewhere in the play, ‘I’ve been through that.’

Photo Credit:  Craig Schwartz

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