Counting and Cracking

S. Shakthidharan

Playwright & Director

S. SHAKTHIDHARAN is an Australian storyteller with Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry. He’s a writer, director and producer of theatre and film, as well as a composer and performer of original music. His plays Counting and Cracking and The Jungle and the Sea (with Eamon Flack), and The Wrong Gods have won critical, commercial and community acclaim. Counting and Cracking (“One of the great Australian plays” - The Guardian) has toured extensively and won a New York Times Critic's Pick. The script won the Victorian Premier’s Literature Prize and the NSW Premier’s Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting. The production won seven Helpmann Awards including Best New Australian Work and Best Direction of a Play. The Jungle and the Sea won the 2024 Victorian Premier's Drama Prize and 4 Sydney Theatre Awards including Best Mainstage Production and Best New Australian Work. The Wrong Gods was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers’ Prize and three Green Room awards. Gather Up Your World In One Long Breath, with Powerhouse Publishing, is his debut book. It won the NSW Premiers’ Multicultural Prize and was shortlisted for the Prime Ministers’ Prize for Non-Fiction. The book will be accompanied by a major year-long, companion artwork with the Museum. Shakthi’s debut feature film The Laugh of Lakshmi is currently in production, coming to cinemas in 2027. He has plays, TV series, and multi-disciplinary works in development. He’s the Director of Kurinji, was previously Director of Co-Curious, and was Founder and Artistic Director of CuriousWorks from 2003-2018. Shakthi is a Creative Australia and Sidney Myer Fellow, and a recipient of the Phillip Parson’s and Kirk Robson awards. In 2026 he won the prestigious global Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama.

Eamon Flack

Playwright & Director

EAMON FLACK is the Artistic Director of Belvoir St Theatre and a leading Australian director, writer and dramaturg. His directing credits include Counting and Cracking (with Associate Director S. Shakthidharan), The Jungle and the Sea (co-directed with S. Shakthidharan), Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, The Master and Margarita, Angels in America, August: Osage County, The Glass Menagerie, Life of Galileo, Ivanov, The Cherry Orchard, King Lear, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jason de Santis’ Tiwi Islands panto Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui. His writing credits include Associate Writer of S. Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking and co-writer with S. Shakthidharan of The Jungle and the Sea; adaptations of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Helen Garner’s The Spare Room, Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Ivanov, Gorky’s Summerfolk, Sophocles’ Antigone, and Ibsen’s Ghosts; co-adapter with Leah Purcell of Ruby Langford Ginibi’s  Don’t Take Your Love To Town, and co-deviser of Beautiful One Day with artists from ILBIJERRI, version 1.0, and the community of Palm Island. For orchestral concert he has adapted and directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream alongside Mendelssohn’s score for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Belvoir St Theatre conducted by Simone Young, and directed and co-created Beethoven and Bridgetower with Anna Goldsworthy, Rita Dove, and Richard Tognetti for the Australian Chamber Orchestra. His work has received multiple Helpmann, Sydney Theatre and Green Room awards, and, with S. Shakthidharan, the Victorian Literary Prize, The Victorian Premier’s Award for Drama, and the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting.