Becoming and Being in Digital and Physical Realms: An Inter- and Transmedial Inquiry into Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot Trilogy

Abstract Quiara Alegría Hudes uses digital and analogue media as tools of characterization, communication, and conflict in her Elliot trilogy, most prominently in the Pulitzer Prize-winning second play, Water by the Spoonful (2011). This article combines intermediality and transmediality as theoretical vantage points because they reveal, first, that Hudes does not reduce analogue and digital channels to a simplistic technology-based dichotomy and, second, that she applies a nuanced approach to portraying how characters see themselves and others, how they interact, and how they attempt to resolve conflicts. In addition to illustrating the playwright’s complex use of media in the published plays, the comparative scrutiny of Hudes’s dramatic texts and of set designs for performances fosters an in-depth understanding of the dynamic sociocultural and historical contexts of different media formats, their uses, and their implications. Consequently, the integration of digital and analogue media into these plays and performances offers thought-provoking options for intertwining geographically separate spaces, past and present, the real and the imagined.