Ann Arbor Observer

Malcolm Tulip directs drama students in Aditi Kapil’s 2017 play, a thought-provoking revisionist comedy investigating the biases in the Western canon and  the power that those who can read and write have over those who can't. The highly allegorical plot centers on Imogen, a character from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing who speaks no lines and is probably a typo…

Hartford Courant

"Imogen Says Nothing," subtitled "The Annotated Life of Imogen of Messina, Last Sighted in the First Folio of William Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing,'" also riffs extravagantly on the phrase "Exit, pursued by bear" from a later Shakespeare play, “The Winter’s Tale.” The playwright has spun these bits of Elizabethan trivia into a profound meditation on women in society, gender roles…

New Haven Register

“It is a lonesome thing to be absent,” says the title character of Aditi Brennan Kapil’s new play “Imogen Says Nothing,” which officially opened Thursday at Yale Repertory Theatre. That line, in various shapes, is the motif of this imaginative, exotic and frightfully pertinent play, which continues through Feb. 11 in its world premiere production…

The Los Angeles Times

Meet Leela. Having arrived in Orange County for a family wedding, the serious teenager from India writes in her journal and goes on an adventure in search of the perfect orange. She is a young woman on the autism spectrum who finds it difficult to navigate social interactions. But one night, she embarks on a drive with her cousin Priti, and the journey is a discovery for everyone…

The StarTribune

“Orange,” a coming-of-age story involving marriage, adventure and autism that gets its world premiere Friday at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis… The play centers on Leela (Elyse Ahmad), a young woman on the autism spectrum. On the eve of a family wedding, she goes on a California joy ride in search of the perfect citrus fruit. Along the way she meets colorfully mythic and real characters…

The Boston Globe

Brahma the creator appears as a stand-up comedian working through gender-assignment issues on stage. Vishnu the protector appears as a tough-girl avatar named Kalki, who saves a couple of outcasts from the dangers of high school. And Shiva the destroyer sails her mattress on a “cosmic ocean” while trying to navigate post-colonial identity and post-concert T-shirt sales…

DigBoston

I’ve never cried during a stand-up routine, at least not until I saw “Brahman/i”... More than a string of jokes — though Brahman/i does serve up a potent pot of jabs that tackle post-colonialism, sexuality, family, lazy Americans, and acceptance — the two-hour show reveals the insecurities, heartbreak, and, ultimately, acceptance, of someone who grapples with identity…

Time Out

Aditi Brennan Kapil's fascinating piece, which had its premiere last fall at Minneapolis's Mixed Blood Theatre, is a layered, insightful consideration of Indian-American cultural identity, gender and colonialism that happens to take the form of a stand-up comedy routine… [the show] educates accessibly with no After School Special aftertaste. Brahman/i knows just how to work a room.

Twin Cities Daily Planet

See any one of Displaced Hindu Gods. Better yet, see all of them—together, spaced out over several nights, doesn’t matter. You should see these plays. Great writing, great direction, great design, great acting. All three stories are very different in style and tone, but they all have a smart sense of humor driving them, which makes them entertaining as well as thought-provoking…

Lavender

Aditi Brennan Kapil takes traditional male Hindu archetypes and feminizes them into Western situations in her remarkable new play trilogy… The Chronicles of Kalki is quite simply breathtaking. This sexually raw tale of three teenaged girls - one reticent, one cynical, and one astoundingly daring - plays with our sense of what is real and what is not…

The Los Angeles Times

The foibles of norms we take for granted — and what it means to be “alien” — are examined from multiple angles as fully assimilated Shiv debates the subtextual nuances of Starfleet adventures with her father, a quick-witted modernist poet who fled the psychic burdens of post-colonial India for the elusive American dream of reinvented identity...

Variety

Audiences take a leap of faith along with scribe Aditi Brennan Kapil in her wonderful crazy quilt of a play “Agnes Under the Big Top,” receiving its world premiere at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater. The result is a tough and tender play and a production that is as graceful and evocative as trapeze artists flying through air with the greatest of ease…

The New York Times

Ms. Kapil, who came to the United States — Minnesota, to be specific — for college, grew up in Sweden, the child of a Bulgarian mother and an Indian father. This remarkable background gives her an unparalleled vantage point for a play about the psychological dislocation that attends the physical dislocation of life as an immigrant. “Agnes Under the Big Top” is rich in feeling…

The StarTribune

"To pack up and leave your loved ones, change your language, your food, for an unknown land -- that's a huge risk," [Kapil] said. "We have romanticized it as a nation of immigrants, but it involves a lot of loss and often ends in failure. This play is about celebrating the spirit of those who made the leap"... "Agnes Under the Big Top," which premieres today at Mixed Blood Theatre, deals with the isolation…

American Theatre Magazine

Heart-pounding attraction, intense all-night conversations - Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Love Person captures the giddiness of new love affairs. But the play is even more eloquently realistic about the wear and tear that time wreaks on relationships. The story focuses on two couples: Free and Maggie, and Vic and Ram. Free is a deaf woman who communicates through American Sign Language; Maggie…

TC Daily Planet

… The play developed into a moving, nuanced, and provocative exploration of language, intimacy, and the real-world landscape of relationships… With a deft touch, Aditi Brennan Kapil’s play, through Risa Brainin’s direction, covers the shiny obliviousness of first attraction, filial jealousy, erosion of intimacy, and the connections and estrangements that occur through language…