“I realised in this story that was hidden from me that the arc of his life was also the story of my community – and that my story and my family’s story was also the story of my homeland,” Shakthidharan says. In Counting and Cracking, he found, “in telling one family’s story you can also tell a nation’s story”.

The play – his debut – was a resounding success. It sold out its premiere season in 2019 before opening night, it won seven Helpmann Awards, took out the 2020 Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Drama, won the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting and has toured the UK. Shakthidharan’s most recent play, The Jungle and the Sea – also directed by Eamon Flack – has been similarly warmly received, and this year won the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Drama.

Despite his work’s resounding success, it hasn’t broken down barriers in the way Shakthidharan would have hoped.

Before he became a playwright, and before he spun his own family history into a story that reflected those of many others, Shakthidharan was a writer who wanted his experiences represented in Australian arts – but they weren’t out there.

“I started a company [Curious Works] because I couldn’t find any pathway into the industry, which would tell the kind of stories that related to the life I was living.” Initially he thought providing more opportunities was needed for a more diverse industry. However, “I very quickly realised that that wasn’t the case – the industry was systemically against telling our stories”.

In the almost 20 years since, has Australian theatre shifted enough to cater to more stories? “Not at all,” Shakthidharan replies immediately. “After Counting and Cracking and all the success it had, I really thought, ‘OK, here’s proof, right? Here’s proof that it can work – a community process can make a mainstream work’,” he says.

“All the things people say, like there’s no recognisable stars, or that’s not a story people know already, or it’s not an existing Shakespeare or those people don’t come to the theatre – it just proved that’s rubbish. If you can reach into people’s hearts and minds, any story can be embraced by all types of Australians, and a Sri Lankan story can be at the heart of an Australian experience. So I thought, ‘Wow, we proved it’. But there was nothing after that – there was no, ‘Cool, let’s do more of this’ from the industry.”

The issues are too deeply ingrained, he explains. “There’s a real lack of diversity inside the people who make decisions in the industry … they can be super well-meaning and there’s no particular individual I have a problem with, but what it means is that they’re subliminally going to support the kinds of stories that they can identify with, that they have knowledge of – and it’s hard for them to go out and seek the kinds of stories that they fundamentally might not understand.”

To shift things, he explains, requires rebuilding infrastructure. “And that’s why it’s taking so long because it’s not just that we need to tell more diverse types of stories, it’s that we need to change the entire process by which we decide and develop and present the stories of this nation. And that kind of systemic change takes decades.” He pauses. “But having said that, I think the change is under way – it’s just moving glacially. But it’s definitely under way.”

He points to the difference between Counting and Cracking and The Jungle and the Sea as an example. For the latter, “I didn’t have to spend four years casting it – I didn’t have to spend 10 years researching and convincing [the] industry it was worth putting on. I was able to replicate the model again.

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“So on the one hand, it’s way too slow. I can’t believe that we have to change an entire system. I really get tired some days. On the other hand, the change is very possible. We start to see little pockets all around the country make those first most difficult breaks into whatever part of the system they’re engaging in. Then from that, as the water starts flowing through the crack, it’s easier to do the next stage and do the next stage to do the next stage.”

In the years since Counting and Cracking went public, Shakthidharan’s relationship with the play has shifted and changed. “2019 was just fear and terror. I was just terrified that my community would hate it, I was terrified that it wouldn’t be good – and what I mean by that is, that if it wasn’t good, it could be something the industry points [at] to say, ‘This is why we shouldn’t do this’. So I really felt the burden of many things.”

But, he says, seeing the community response was significant. “I tried to go to as many shows as I could, because of the chats that would happen with members of the Sri Lankan community afterwards. And they always had things to tell me.”

After its 2019 premiere, Melbourne audiences will in May finally have the chance to see Counting and Cracking when it is staged at the new Union Theatre, as part of the Rising Festival. It’s going to be a particularly special run, the playwright explains. “This is the most intimate version of Counting and Cracking that anyone’s going to get to see anywhere in the world.”

Counting and Cracking will play at Union Theatre, University of Melbourne from May 31 to June 23. Tickets are available for presale to Rising Members from February 26 and on general sale from March 1.

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