Aditi Kapil

Aditi Kapil

ADITI BRENNAN KAPIL is a television and theatre writer, actress, and director. She is of Bulgarian and Indian descent, and was raised in Sweden prior to moving to Minneapolis, MN and more recently Los Angeles, CA. Recent TV projects include Season 3 of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" on Amazon, "Away" on Netflix, and Season 2 of "American Gods" on Starz. Recent theatre projects...
ADITI BRENNAN KAPIL is a television and theatre writer, actress, and director. She is of Bulgarian and Indian descent, and was raised in Sweden prior to moving to Minneapolis, MN and more recently Los Angeles, CA. Recent TV projects include Season 3 of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" on Amazon, "Away" on Netflix, and Season 2 of "American Gods" on Starz. Recent theatre projects include a new American history play titled "Pax Americana" for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, "Orange" for SouthCoast Repertory Theatre, and "Imogen Says Nothing" for Yale Repertory Theatre. She is a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists, and she is currently developing a feature adaptation of "Daughter of the Deep" with Rick Riordan for Disney+.

Aditi’s first play, "Love Person," received the 2009 Stavis Playwriting Award, and her play "Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale" was selected as a Distinguished New Play Development project by the NEA as administered by Arena Stage. Her Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy ("Brahman/i, a one-hijra stand-up comedy show"; "The Chronicles of Kalki"; and "Shiv"), based loosely on the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, premiered in repertory at Mixed Blood Theatre in October 2013, and have since been produced across the US and in the UK. "Brahman/i" and "The Chronicles of Kalki" received an unprecedented double nomination for the James Tait Black Prize, University of Edinburgh, UK.

Plays

  • Imogen Says Nothing
    A revisionist comedy in verse and prose featuring Imogen, a character who only appears in the first folio of William Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing', speaks no lines, and is probably a typo. A play about the voices absent from our canon and the consequences of cutting them.
  • Orange
    An adventure through Orange County told from the perspective of a girl on the autism spectrum. A play with illustrations.
  • Shiv
    Exploring the psychological residue of post-colonialism, "Shiv" is a fantastical journey to liberation from one's past, from one's present, and of the destruction that makes rebirth possible.
  • The Chronicles of Kalki
    This comic-book infused girl-gang thriller chronicles the adventures of Kalki, a young girl who may or may not be the final avatar of Vishnu, come to rid the world of demons and evil.
  • Brahman/i, a one-hijra stand-up comedy show
    This hilarious stand-up comedy routine/play takes on history, mythology, gender roles, and high school through the inimitable comic lens of Brahman/i, a boy/girl tethered by neither gender nor culture, and wildly curious and inventive in his/her examination of both.
  • Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale
    Explores the intersecting lives of immigrants in a US city. It is a magical tale of hope and disappointment, identity and reinvention, narrated by an itinerant subway busker. Against the subterranean rhythms of a subway train, an itinerant subway busker, a Liberian home care worker, a former Bulgarian ringmaster and his wife, and an Indian call center escapee find and redefine themselves in today’s America.
  • Love Person
    A four part love story in Sanskrit, ASL and English in which love transcends sexual orientation, physical attraction, and social structure, and rests instead on the ways in which we communicate and how communication bonds or breaks us. The play is structured around 4 Sanskrit love poems that influence and reflect the journeys of the characters.