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GREG HELGESON |
If theater types are reputed to be egotistical, then Aditi Brennan Kapil '94 defies the stereotype. In conversation, the Minneapolis-based actor, director and playwright is modest, low-key and self-effacing, dismissing many of her accomplishments as the result of good timing or luck.
Her career in theater began when Kapil, who was raised in Sweden by a Bulgarian mother and Indian father, signed up for "Intro to Acting" on a lark during Orientation Week for Mac freshmen. "I thought it would be a blow-off class," she laughs. "Little did I know it would be one of the toughest classes I took in college."
She eventually became a dramatic arts major, but also fed her love of words and writing with a dual major in English. She believes that her liberal arts education was essential to her future success. "If I had gone to a conservatory, I'd be more focused, but less educated. Macalester's broad knowledge base has really helped me in the working world."
 Kapil lists getting to know Jack Reuler '75, founder of the Minneapolis-based Mixed Blood Theater Company, as one of her theatrical "lucky breaks." He spoke to her senior seminar at Mac. On the strength of her first audition, he cast her in a play he was directing one summer. "After putting a lot of effort into it at the beginning," she says, "work started to come, and I realized, 'I can do this for a living.'" Kapil's acting credits include roles at most of the Twin Cities' major theater companies.
Playwriting, a former side interest, is beginning to take up a good portion of her time. Her first play, The Deaf Duckling, a bilingual production written in American Sign Language and English, was commissioned by Mixed Blood. Based largely on the success of that production, Kapil was commissioned to write original productions for other theaters, including Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater and SteppingStone Theater for Youth Development. She's currently working on an original play, Love Person, a love story written in Sanskrit, American Sign Language and English, which was read this fall during Playwrights' Week at Lark Theater in New York.
While the range of Kapil's work is broad, there is one thread that unites it all: an interest in language, communication and the perception of "other."
'Macalester's broad knowledge base has really helped me in the working world.' |
"In my playwriting especially, I'm interested in how people communicate with each other," Kapil says. "On a global level, I'm interested in how the languages we speak affect the way we appear to others. Unlike a work of fiction, the theater is a place where those issues can be explored and discussed."
While other playwrights might be tempted to pack their belongings and follow their play to the Big Apple, Kapil and her college sweetheart, Sean Brennan '94, are committed to the lives they've built for themselves and their two young daughters in the Twin Cities.
"We have a really great arts community here," she says. "I make a decent living in the theater. I can have a family and a house. I'm beyond the point where I want to work for nothing, and, besides: After all those years of proving myself, I like being a slightly bigger fish."
Andy Steiner '90 |
