At the center of Quiara Alegría Huedes’ Elliot trilogy of plays – Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue; Water by the Spoonful; and The Happiest Song Plays Last – is the former soldier. But Elliot isn’t someone the playwright made up out of whole cloth. Instead, he’s based on her cousin, whom she calls her muse. Sure, she changed some details, but “the fictional Elliot’s life is close enough to this young man’s that he can confidently be regarded as the Ur-Elliot, the original model, the irreducible essence of Elliot-ness from whom all other Elliots on various stages have sprung.”