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on Quiara's writing in general
"Even though In the Heights is about Washington Heights," Hudes says, "a lot of it comes out of my experiences in North Philadelphia, where businesses are always opening and closing."  
    -Howard Shapiro, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"She grew up in West Philadelphia, playing piano by ear and entertaining herself writing songs, stories, and plays. 'I was always writing,' she says..."
    -Alexis Soloski, The Village Voice

"Hudes would ask her grandmother to tell her stories. There were exotic ones about her grandmother’s early life on the coast of Puerto Rico, dramatic ones about the tough times after arriving in the United States, and colorful ones about how shocked Hudes’s stepfather had been the first time he’d held a bottle of Coke. He’d never felt anything so cold before."
    -Lawrence Goodman, Brown Alumni Magazine

on In the Heights
“In the Heights, the love letter Lin-Manuel Miranda and librettist Quiara Alegría Hudes have written to the life and residents of Washington Heights, represents an extraordinary blend of old and new, a stylistically groundbreaking 21st-century musical that wouldn’t disturb Jerome Kern’s sleep. It’s one of the most satisfying old-timey book musicals in years. Gentrification is remaking the diversely Latino block that comprises Anna Louizos’s set, driving away longtime residents even as Usnavi chases his girl Vanessa, and his friend Benny tries to win over uncertain Stanford student Nina, and somebody walks out of the store with a winning lottery ticket… Reading the show’s many raves, and talking to people it moved or thrilled, I wonder if we’re responding, on an almost subliminal level, to the way Miranda and Hudes revive a slumbering musical tradition. From the Gershwins–on–Catfish Row sound of Porgy and Bess, to this show’s most obvious precursor, the Shakespeare-meets-street-gang-meets-Bernstein hybrid West Side Story, to dozens of other works for the American musical stage, immigrants and the children of immigrants have insisted that it’s possible to fling wildly divergent cultures and sensibilities together in a way that honors their origins while creating something altogether new.  In other words, they found a way to achieve in art what New York itself is forever trying to achieve in life.”  
    -Jeremy McCarter, New York Magazine

‘"In five years, when this whole city's rich folks and hipsters, who's gonna miss this raggedy little business?" That reflection will strike a chord with anyone who has looked on sorrowfully as yet another Mom-and-Pop shop closes its doors or another no-frills diner gets swallowed up in New York's ever-accelerating makeover into a playground for money movers and trust-fund kids. It also sums up the bittersweet nostalgia that runs through "In the Heights," providing a soulful counterpoint to its infectious celebration… The story's conflicts have been sharpened in the move, its emotional tensions deepened and its characters more fully shaped, adding nuance to the central theme of immigrants and their children forging a community only to have their unity challenged by the unstoppable forces of gentrification… The sense of people bound together yet each with a distinctive voice, honoring their cultural roots while determinedly carving their own identity, gives "In the Heights" real humanity."
    -David Rooney, Variety  

"Here is the musical that still believes in the American Dream; the New York musical that still insists anything can happen in New York; the musical now on Broadway that's written of, by, and for a community of relatively recent arrivals in whose minds Broadway is more closely associated with 181st Street than with Times Square. This is lovely and heartening, because it links the hip-hop, salsa-pop immediacy of In the Heights to the long line of ethnic infusions that have been refreshing the American musical for well over a century."
    -Michael Feingold, Village Voice

“Indeed, In the Heights might even be regarded as the first musical of the Barack Obama era.  It represents change on Broadway.  It’s a show full of hope.”  
    -Richard Zoglin, Time Magazine

on Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue 
"Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue” is that rare and rewarding thing: a theatre work that succeeds on every level while creating something new.”
    -Phoebe Hoban, The New York Times  

“A lush and evocative tone poem about the way the landscape of the soul is transformed by war. Suggesting that patriotism and patrimony are tied up together in the same blood knot, the play describes the miracle of a heart that's wounded and healed at the same time. There's a certain fugue-like math to the way the stories argue with themselves, the way motifs dance through the text like notes on sheet music. Though the language can elicit a visceral sting, it's just as often a celebration of the sensuality of memory.  The most haunting moments have a hallucinogenic quality.”
    -Wendell Brock, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Affecting drama...  Hudes snubs the political for the personal at nearly every turn, bestowing her considerable talents on precise evocations of each character's desires, terrors, and daily routines. Also a composer, Hudes writes with considerable attention to rhythm, allowing rap, military chants, and classical preludes to fill the spaces between words...  Her ability to realize character and to craft scenes for multiple voices is extraordinary. Elliot, and any other war veteran, should be grateful for such an articulate and tender advocate."
    -Alexis Soloski, The Village Voice

“Streaked with a deep poetry and musicality, as well as a fittingly raw and raucous spirit, in every scene… The subtle brilliance of Hudes' story, which unspools in just 80 perfect minutes is the way she ties and unties the threads of her characters' lives as they live, and relive defining moments, from the tedium of camp life (where food is the primary focus of fantasy), to the heat of battle, to the agony of military hospitals and, finally, to the disorientation of the homefront.”
    -Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times  

“It is every soldier’s story, and every family’s story. Not only is the play contemporary and socially potent, it is also, in purely artistic terms, immensely satisfying.  Hudes’ structure is a wonder. She freely plays with time, but never loses the audience. Her rhythm is cinematic, and so is her sense of scene. But it’s not contrary to say that Hudes is also fantastically theatrical.  All four characters narrate; expose; and comment on the action. And all four operate as satellites of each other.”
    -Michael Eck, The Times Union


“It's not so much the men's soldiering that is chilling as their family compulsion to relive it. The music changes, the weapons evolve, the terrain varies, but the nightmares, the fear and the blood bind the men together, even though they barely speak of their experiences to one another. Hudes's achievement lies in making their taciturnity speak volumes.”
    -Jessica Branch, Time Out New York

"Elliot, young and frightened, thinks of his mother's wonderful cooking--chuletas, pasteles, morsilla, sorullito, sopa de fideo.  He remembers the first man he killed.  And then his father, young again and fighting in Vietnam, reenacts his own traumatic experience--mirroring each other's actions.  Hudes' voice is both vivid and evocative.  And her point about the enduring cost of way to those who fight remains, sadly, all too true."
    -Christine Dolen, The Miami Herald  

on The Adventures of Barrio Grrrl!
"Full of magical moments…  The talented cast rides on waves of color, light, musical language and numinous music, all perfectly in sync with the heart and soul of Hudes' unique melodrama…  Sensual magic." 
    -Willamette Week

"Wildly energetic and quirky. Reality, humor and poetry are zestfully interwoven." 
    -The Oregonian

"Besides having hazy sex scenes with her alter ego, Amazing Voice, through the course of the play, Ana reclaims the word 'whore' and embraces her environment as a new take on the rags-to-riches cliche...  Those with platform fetishes or penchants for fantastic wigs should bring a wet nap." 
    -Just Out

on Yemaya's Belly 
"The writing continually blooms with poetic turns and illustrative stories... Hudes's literary flourishes are splendid...  Hudes's ties-that-bind, circle-of-life ruminations bear beautiful fruit." 
    -The Washington Post

"It entertains us and shows us the power of the human spirit." 
    -The Times Record

"Rhythm and cultural texture are the real stars of this production, and Hudes’s script is a recipe for stagecraft of the most energetic and whimsical flavors."  
    -The Portland Phoenix