''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 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 a ...

for the 2019

Sydney Festival Sydney Festival is a major arts festival in Australia's largest city, Sydney that runs for three weeks every January, since it was established in 1977. The festival program features in excess of 100 events from local and international artists ...

, with

Eamon Flack Eamon Flack is an Australian theatre director. He is Artistic Director of Belvoir, a theatre company in Sydney's Surry Hills. Flack, who grew up in Darwin, Northern Territory, was encouraged towards a career in theatre by actor Bille Brown whe ...

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 The NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights, formerly the Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award, is an Australian annual award for early-career playwrights in New South Wales, offered by Belvoir St Theatre and Arts NSW from 1995 ...

. ''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 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 ...

and the

Victorian Premier's Prize for Drama The Victorian Premier's Prize for Drama is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. The winner of this category prize vies with four other category winners (fiction; non-fiction; poetry; young adult literature) for overal ...

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

credited as associate writer. In April 2020 ''Counting and Cracking'' won the

Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, also known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, were first awarded in 1979. They are among the richest literary awards in Australia. Notable prizes include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, th ...

at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

References

{{Victorian Prize for Literature Australian plays 2019 plays