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Counting and Cracking spans nearly five decades and runs at three-and-a-half hours. (Supplied: Belvoir\/Brett Boardman)<\/p>\n
Shakthi told ABC Arts he “felt proud our stories can be on that global stage”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He found out he won via email a few weeks ago while shooting his debut movie The Laugh of Lakshmi, about a mother and son separated by civil war, in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
“The stories I tell are not the usual stories this country tells,” he said.<\/p>\n
“To get that global recognition hopefully puts forward a version of Australia which is a bit more progressive than our current reality here.”<\/p>\n
Shakthi added the money also makes it possible for him to continue to pursue a career as a writer.<\/p>\n
“I still have to fight hard to do anything in this country,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s so incredible to be able to write from a place of focusing on the art.”<\/p>\n
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Rajan Velu, Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Anandavalli\u00a0in Shakthi’s second play,\u00a0The Jungle and the Sea, at Belvoir in 2022. (Supplied: Belvoir\/Sriram Jeyaraman)<\/p>\n
Writing on Instagram<\/a>, Shakthi said he was “still in shock” about his win.<\/p>\n “The prize is for an artist’s body of work, he wrote. The judges decide the winners by reading their work. This means a group of strangers overseas \u2014 who had never heard of me \u2014 were taken in by these stories of Asia and Australia and chose to embrace them.<\/p>\n “I like that. It’s what writing can do: pull you in to the specific, vulnerable, emotional truths of a place and a people you have never encountered before.”<\/p>\n Inspired by Shakthi’s family history, Counting and Cracking went on to tour the UK and New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n His family was forced to leave Sri Lanka following the 1983 Black July pogrom in Colombo, which killed an estimated 5,600 Tamils.<\/p>\n Speaking to ABC Arts in 2024<\/a>, when the play opened in Melbourne, Shakthi said making Counting and Cracking helped him and his mother come to terms with their migrant identities.<\/p>\n “To tell the gloriously complex story of your community in full public view, and to have other people embrace that, has been a radical act of belonging.”<\/p>\n In 2022, Shakthi reunited with Flack for The Jungle and the Sea<\/a>, which explicitly uncovered the toll of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009).<\/p>\n Sri Lankan civil war play<\/a><\/p>\n Shakthidharan\u2019s acclaimed debut play broke silences in his home and in his community and his latest contends with more recent, painful history.<\/p>\n His latest play, The Wrong Gods, about the tension between progress and tradition, and ensuing environmental degradation, opened in Sydney in 2025.<\/p>\n Last year, Shakthi also published his debut memoir, Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath.<\/p>\n He is director and co-founder of Western Sydney theatre company Kurinji.<\/p>\n The Windham-Campbell judges described Shakthi as a “rare storyteller whose work traverses time and space while remaining anchored in core emotional truths”.<\/p>\n Other winners of the Windham-Campbell Prizes this year include British novelist Gwendoline Riley and Belgian American writer Lucy Sante.\u00a0<\/p>\n Past Australian winners of the prize include author Helen Garner, playwright Patricia Cornelius and poet Ali Cobby Eckermann.<\/p>\n The Jungle and the Sea is at Belvoir St Theatre<\/a> from July 11-Aug 2, and Melbourne Theatre Company<\/a> from August 14-September 12.\u00a0<\/p>\n