''Counting and Cracking'' is a play by Australian playwright S. Shakthidharan, first staged in 2019.
Synopsis
The play concerns four generations of the one
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
family across Sri Lanka and Australia.
Productions
The play was first produced by
Belvoir and Co-Curious at the
Sydney Town Hall
The Sydney Town Hall is a late 19th-century heritage-listed town hall building in the city of Sydney, the capital city of New South Wales, Australia, housing the chambers of the Lord Mayor of Sydney, council offices, and venues for meetings an ...
for the 2019
Sydney Festival, with
Eamon Flack as director. The production was also mounted at the
Adelaide Festival
The Adelaide Festival of Arts, also known as the Adelaide Festival, an arts festival, takes place in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in March each year. Started in 1960, it is a major celebration of the arts and a significant cultural ...
that same year.
Awards
Shakthidharan's script was originally titled ''A Counting and Cracking of Heads'', and was the joint winner of the 2015
NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights.
''Counting and Cracking'' received seven
2019 Helpmann Awards including
Best Play and
Best New Australian Work and won best mainstage production at the 2019
Sydney Theatre Awards.
It won both the
Victorian Prize for Literature and the
Victorian Premier's Prize for Drama at the 2020
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards
The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry. As of 2013, it is reportedly Australia's richest literary p ...
, with theatre director
Eamon Flack credited as associate writer.
In April 2020 ''Counting and Cracking'' won the
Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.
References
{{Victorian Prize for Literature
Australian plays
2019 plays