Shakthidharan is rocking the boat – and he’s not sorry

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When asked about some of the opposition within his Sri Lankan community to being so open on stage, S. Shakthidharan shakes his head and laughs heartily between bites of his curry. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”

He’s brought me to a suburban park in Homebush West, away from the hustle of the stadiums and into a deep slice of the migrant networks that are woven throughout western Sydney.

Picking at his takeaway order of traditional Sri Lankan curry, the award-winning playwright and novelist whose works have focused on the layers of pain and history folded into acts of migration, says he is not afraid of opening up to wider Australia about his family and community’s secrets.

The award-winning playwright is at ease ordering at Ram’s Food.

Ram’s serves traditional Sri Lankan fare.

“Step by step, we have to figure out a way to be truly ourselves in public,” he says. “In institutions, on our stages, on our cinema screens, in the offices and on the streets because, until we have that level of comfort and vulnerability to be our full selves, to make mistakes in public, to talk about what we want to improve in our communities, as well as what’s amazing and glorious about them, we don’t truly belong.”

It is a radical act for a son of immigrants because it undermines the idea that migrants should not rock the cultural boat, a belief often held by both long-established Australians and recent immigrants themselves.

The honesty he advocates carries much unspoken risk: the risk of judgment by mainstream Australia, of incurring hatred and communal exclusion, of bringing shame to his family and shattering the carefully constructed infrastructure his community has painstakingly built to feel at home here.

But in this quiet park among laughing children and uncles trotting around with their hands behind their backs, Shakthidharan looks like a man relishing the challenge.

His work had already broken many barriers. His epic, multigenerational debut play, Counting and Cracking, was voted a “best Australian play of the 21st century” in an ArtsHub poll. It had a sellout season at Sydney Festival in 2019, attracted rave reviews, and its script won numerous awards in both NSW and Victoria.

Counting and Cracking during its sold-out season in Sydney in 2019.

The Jungle and the Sea will be staged again at the Belvoir Street Theatre this month.

He has since written The Jungle and the Sea in 2022 and The Wrong Gods, which premiered last year. His debut novel, a memoir called Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath, was also released to much acclaim last year. He is due to release a series of large-scale works at the Powerhouse Museum when it opens later in 2026, as well as Two Blood, produced with the Australian Dance Theatre. A new season of The Jungle and the Sea opens this weekend at Belvoir Street Theatre.

Despite being a takeaway-only restaurant, Ram’s Food heaves with that special culinary magic reserved for spots that are dedicated to, and loyally serve, their community. Tucked in a laneway plaza off the main road in Homebush West, the small shop buzzes with a constant stream of elders, families and rushing workers, all comfortably traversing the intricacies of the ordering process at speed.

Shakthidharan is no different. Ram’s traditional Sri Lankan food is a long-standing favourite of his. He leans against the bain-marie and casually discusses his order with the restaurant owner, leisurely picking out his favourites.

I am happy for him to order for me, and he considers his options carefully before landing on chicken kotho roti for my lunch. For himself, he orders chicken curry with rice, eggplant, potato and tomatoes, accompanied by fish patties and mutton rolls as entrées.

The kotho roti is a chopped up roti, or flatbread, mixed with vegetables and chicken. It is an outstanding lunch, delicious in ways that feel novel. It is served alongside a gravy laced with a unique blend of spices and heat, bursting with character.

Shakthidharan is in deeply familiar territory, having often ordered from Ram’s as a teen and walked to nearby Melville Reserve on his own because “sometimes home’s a pain in the ass”.

Shakthidharan bought takeout from Ram’s in his teens.

Rice and chicken curry and kotho roti from Ram’s.

He was born in Sri Lanka in 1983, shortly before the civil war that prompted the scattering of his family around the world. He was raised in western Sydney by a single mother who was an acclaimed classical Indian dancer and teacher, building his familiarity with stages and theatre.

Before his breakout plays, Shakthidharan spent years working in grassroots community arts organisations and in digital media, and directed various independent films and media installations.

He grew up in what he describes as a “Sri-Lankan McMansion” in Homebush West, deeply connected to the many cultural anchors that dot the region, such as Ram’s Food.

Every diaspora has its deep cuts, its secret places, shielded by language or spiritual barriers, born from fear of cultural dilution in the face of minority status. Sometimes that can be neighbourhood eateries and backyard takeaway joints, like Ram’s. Other times, they are mosques, temples, community halls or sports centres.

Shakthidharan wants his art to speak to the true nature of the Australian migrant experience.

He doesn’t write for the mainstream, but believes presenting a truer picture of the migrant experience brings the mainstream and migrant communities together.

Shakthidharan treads carefully when I ask whether a place such as our lunch spot should be kept for those in the know, speaking to an ongoing conversation in established migrant communities about how to relate to mainstream Australia. The question they ask is: how much or how should we let people in? For a spot like Ram’s, Shakthidharan had an easy answer when it comes to inviting in outsiders. It has to be done “with a non-extractive, non-transactional relationship”.

“The Sri Lanka community been coming to this place since 1999, so we’ve been coming here for 27 years, and it’s, like, just come as a respectful visitor.”

And in the same fashion, he invites the wider Australian community into his stories, rich in cultural specifics like the ethnic roots of the Sri Lankan civil war, or why families would want to keep secret histories that trigger a cultural sense of shame; who they choose to love and marry or the experiences that drove them to migrate, for instance.

Shakthidharan wants his work to “present to Australia a realer, fuller picture of us”. He describes it as breaking away from the older generation, who presented to mainstream Australia a “simplified version of us” that deepened the chasm between these communities and the rest of the country.

He wants to see discussions such as intra-ethnic and intra-religious disagreements, debates around changes in values between generations, or the trauma many migrants hold brought to mainstream audiences.

Anandavalli and Kalieaswari Srinivasan in rehearsals for the new production of The Jungle and the Sea at Belvoir St Theatre.

Sukania Venugopal and Nipuni Sharada help unravel mysteries in Counting and Cracking.

“I’m unapologetic about that because I don’t think we’re doing it in a way where we have to fit into the mainstream. It’s relying on art’s power to be universal. Being specific and honest to one’s own community actually creates art that speaks to everyone.”

It’s a philosophy that radiates through his work, including The Jungle and the Sea. Produced by the same team behind the seismic Counting and Cracking, it similarly reaches into the past to mend the wounds of the present, riveting audiences around the world and striking a nerve with the local Sri Lankan community.

It’s perspective on the Sri Lankan civil war, and on the Tamil freedom fighters in particular, drew ire from some sections of the community. Shakthidharan attempts to take a nuanced view, presenting both the roots of the conflict and the ensuing, horrific violence as equally in need of dissection.

In doing so, he has unearthed wounds in his community that ripple from the conflict, sparking long-dormant conversations. “I’ve seen it so many times now, where at the interval breaks, a parent or a grandparent will turn to a child or a grandchild and say, ‘I was there’. And that’s all it takes, sometimes, to get them talking.”

He says there has been a “silence between first-generation migrants and all those who’ve come since their children”, and that his plays have provided space for “our elders to properly open up”.

There is a determination in his works and words that can only be produced by a deeply held belief that what he is doing is right. As he puts it, nothing else can mend the pain of the past than “feeling seen”.

“Feeling seen is like the action that happens, but the deeper thing that comes from that [is] we feel we belong here. And you can’t threaten that. It’s a human right, and you’ve seen us now, and your story is part of our story, and it makes the roots of our belonging, the tendrils of it, unbreakable.”

And to Shakthidharan, this approach to art is a balm for all of Australia, not just for migrant communities. That shared empathy and connecting over different perspectives could create a healthy openness in the country’s discourse.

That extends to our fractured politics, with Shakthidharan specifically calling out conservative political figures such as Pauline Hanson and Tony Abbott, saying they “pride themselves on a culture of fear”, which he also dismisses with a wave of his hand.

“It’s so, so boring, and I don’t want everyday life to be like that. I don’t want my streets to be like that, and I don’t want a country like that, but those people will try and get us there unless we fight that and say that difference is the best.

“Our stories put forward the idea of difference as a beautiful, essential, visceral thing, and teach us that learning how to love across difference is what it means to be human

“You’re kidding yourself if you think that you can walk into any relationship or family or halls of government or office, and do something useful for the country just by gathering around you people who think exactly like you, and everyone furiously agreeing.”

And with a grin, he adds that differences are the “tastiest part of life”.

The Jungle and the Sea plays at the Belvoir St Theatre, July 11 to August 2, the Canberra Theatre Centre, August 6 to 9 and Melbourne Theatre Company, August 14 to September 12.