Most children fill their playtime with dolls, games and Legos. When she was a tot in Philadelphia, Quiara Alegria Hudes liked to fool around with books and words.
"From the second I began to speak and learned how to write, that's almost all I've wanted to do," said the playwright who, at 33, has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist ("Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue" and "In the Heights"). "I wrote poems, magazine articles, anything my little mind could imagine. That was how I played, with words, not toys."If her word fascination pre-destined her, she did not know it at first.
"My family is Puerto Rican and Jewish, and they're big into music," she said by phone from New York, where she lives. "That was my proclivity. My aunt, Wendy Hudes, composed original scores for the Big Apple Circus for 17 years. Her husband is a trumpeter and bandleader. I expected to follow that line."
She has, in a way. She has been telling stories onstage, much of it with music. Hudes' "Barrio Grrrl!" is a new musical about a 9-year-old; the touring production plays through March 27 at the Children's Theatre.
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