Aditi Brennan Kapil is an American playwright and screenwriter.
Kapil has had plays commissioned from Yale Repertory Theatre (Imogen Says Nothing), La Jolla Playhouse (Brahman/i), South Coast Repertory Theatre (Orange), Mixed Blood Theatre (The Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy, Agnes Under the Big Top, and Love Person), and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (translating Measure for Measure with dramaturg Liz Engelman and an American Revolutions commission). She is a Mellon Playwright-in-Residence at Mixed Blood Theatre, an artistic associate at Park Square Theatre, a Core Writer at The Playwrights' Center, and a Resident Writer at New Dramatists.
Early life
Kapil is of Indian descent and was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. She grew up in Sweden before moving to Minnesota to attend Macalester College. At Macalester, she intended on becoming a journalist until the college's only journalism professor died. She was taking an acting class at the time, and that introduction to the theater stuck. Kapil graduated with a B.A. in English and Dramatic Arts.
Career
Kapil began her professional career in theater as a Twin Cities actress. She became a playwright at the encouragement of Jack Reuler, founder of the Mixed Blood Theatre. In addition to her career as an actress, playwright, and director, she has worked with Mixed Blood's artistic director Jack Reuler to curate a list of plays about people with disabilities as a part of Mixed Blood's Disability Visibility Project, which seeks to support disabled actors as well as ensure that stories of disabled individuals continue to have a space on stage. In 2000, Kapil was awarded a grant from the Jerome Foundation for two months travel in India with her father, Satie Kumar Kapil, an award-winning Punjabi poet. The purpose of the trip was to trace her family history in Punjab and meet with other Indian novelists, poets, artists, and cultural sociologists.
Playwriting
Kapil's first play, Deaf Duckling, debuted in 2006 at the Mixed Blood Theatre. Kapil's play Gotama (2006), written at the request of director Andy Kim and designer Masanari Kawahara, opened at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis. At the same time, her play The Adventures of Hanuman, King of the Monkeys debuted at Stepping Stone Theatre for Youth Development in St. Paul. Hanuman is a Bollywood-style musical based on the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, told from a child's perspective. This play was followed by Chitrangada: The Girl Prince for SteppingStone Theatre for Youth in 2008. This play is told in iambic verse based on an episode in the Mahabharata. In 2007, Kapil also directed and co-wrote the play Messy Utopia with Seema Sueko, Velina Hasu-Houston, Janet Allard, and Naomi Iizuka. A three-year residency grant from the Mellon Foundation, which included salary and benefits, allowed her to work as the playwright in residence at Mixed Blood. This grant was awarded through the National Playwright Residency Program, administered by HowlRound. Kapil was among the first cohort of this grant in 2013. During this residency, she debuted The Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy at the end of 2013. The trilogy contains modern characters inspired by the Hindu deities Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Kapil's piece, Doe (2015), debuted as part of The Car Plays, a multi-author work commissioned by the La Jolla Playhouse that consisted of mini-plays staged in cars. In 2016, Kapil wrote an adaptation of Mitali Perkin's novel Rickshaw Girl for its run at the Children's Creativity Museum Theater in San Francisco. Kapil's play Orange also had its world premiere at Mixed Blood. In 2016, her grant from the Mellon Foundation was renewed for another three years.