At the PWC this week: Aditi Brennan Kapil

Core Writer Aditi Brennan Kapil is at the Playwrights’ Center this week, workshopping her new play Commie Kid and the Reichstag Fire Trial of 1933 in partnership with La Jolla Playhouse, with director Lisa Channer and actors Christian Bardin, Jennifer Blagen, Bruce A. Young, Nathan Christopher, and Ansa Akyea. The workshop will conclude with a free public reading on Friday, November 20, at 4 p.m. Learn a bit about Aditi in this mini-interview.

What are you working on this year?

I have a bunch of stuff in various stages of development, which is exciting and complex. The project I’m working on at the Playwrights’ Center this week is a commission with La Jolla Playhouse which is a piece that has been gestating for an uncommonly long time and is still sort of writhing into existence. This particular piece is taking me to some deep places and taking longer to wrap my mind around, but that’s always an exciting discovery too, that this idea that you thought was pretty straight forward is going to take for a serious ride.

What do you do when you're stuck on something you’re writing?

I either switch what I’m working on—I always have a few projects in process and if I’m lucky I’m not on a deadline and can let the work take the lead—or I change my circumstances, like blast music, or go write in a coffee shop. But honestly, I also just sit there and wait it out a lot. I read this John Cleese quote once about how he was willing to work at a thing longer than most, that was what made him successful, and that really made an impression on me. I’m willing to stare the thing that is not working down for as long as it takes. And then at some point I take a nap and/or time passes and the path clears.

Where do your ideas come from?

Need…that abstract thing that I can’t define other than that it’s a feeling of need. If telling this story doesn’t feel like a “need” I’m probably not going to spend three years working on it.