ABSENCE IS A FEARSOME THING:
An Interview with Aditi Brennan Kapil
Playwright Aditi Brennan Kapil often calls Imogen Says Nothing a “revisionist hijacking of history.” Production Dramaturg Charles O’Malley sat down with Aditi to talk about her writing process and how she’s using the play to give voice to those who have been expunged from the literary canon.
Charles O’Malley: Yale Rep commissioned you to write a play in 2011. How did the idea for Imogen Says Nothing emerge? Aditi Brennan Kapil: Years ago, I was cast as Imogen in a college production of Much Ado About Nothing. Imogen, Leonato’s wife, only appears in a few stage directions in the quarto and first two folio editions of the play, and she has no lines—she’s most likely the result of a typo, a cut. There’s even some debate about her name—it’s actually spelled Innogen in the quarto and folios. By the eighteenth century, she is “expunged” from Theobald’s edition of Shakespeare’s works and relegated to a footnote. Many contemporary editions don’t include her at all. A few performances into the run, I was silently holding Leonato’s arm when Beatrice said the line, “the one is like an image, and says nothing,” and I heard “Imogen says nothing.” Whatever the actual history of this ghost character, in that moment Beatrice mocking my silence made an impression. And when Yale offered me a commission, I proposed writing Imogen her own play as a way to explore 9