Imogen Says Nothing

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In the first folio of Shakepeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, a character named Imogen appears briefly in the stage directions. She speaks no lines and is probably a typo.

In Aditi Kapil’s Imogen Says Nothing, Imogen is a woman in Elizabethan England whose life is changed by the opportunity to appear in a performance of Much Ado About Nothing – an opportunity reserved solely for men. Imogen appears on stage as a woman playing a man playing a woman. To make matters more complicated, Imogen is also a bear.

A revisionist comedy in verse and prose, this feminist hijacking of Shakespeare investigates the voices that have long been absent from the theatrical canon, and the consequences of cutting them.

Imogen Says Nothing premiered on January 20, 2017, at the Yale Repertory Theatre, which also commissioned the play, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Written by Aditi Kapil
Directed by Malcolm Tulip

FUN FACTS: Aditi Kapil took the title from a piece of dialogue in Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice, when describing Benedick, says, “The one is too like an image and says nothing.”

Aditi Kapil discusses the development of Imogen at Yale here: