Aditi Brennan Kapil—raised in Sweden by Indian and Bulgarian parents; recently nationalized citizen of the United States—is excused for her identity crisis. Anyone with that complicated a pedigree would be preoccupied by self-examination; a writer even more so. Which explains why Kapil’s output—including last year’s brilliant Love Person, a three-language, four-way romantic drama—is populated by so many confused, mixed-up people.

“I’m constantly in conversation about the things that fascinate me,” she agologizes. Namely: “Identity, language, culture. It’s fascinating when disparate elements meet and friction develops. I feel like walking friction because of my background.”

There’s no need to apologize. Friction is a hot commodity in the drama biz, and Kapil trades in it keenly. It’s paying off: She recently learned that Love Person had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and that the National Endowment for the Arts had chosen her next play, Agnes Under the Big Top, for its “Distinguished New Play” development project (a $20,000 grant). Not bad for an actress who almost didn't become a playwright.

“I started writing plays when I started having children,” she says. Unable to convince theaters to cast her while she was carrying her first child, Kapil took the advice of Mixed Blood artistic director Jack Reuler and wrote a play for Nic Zapco, a local deaf actress. Since then, the response to her plays has been overwhelming. So much so that the circus-themed Agnes, about the intersecting paths of immigrants in the United States, is being produced with support from the NEA, two local theaters, another in Philadelphia, a play development center in New York and a theater collective in Bulgaria. You’d think being pulled in so many directions would only worsen Kapil’s identity crisis. Well, we’ve liked the results so far, so we’ll compound the problem even further by adding one more descriptor to the mixed-up person that is Aditi Brennan Kapil: One of the best playwrights in town. +