Working on a Sri Lankan-Australian Epic, He Learned His Family’s Past

The playwright S. Shakthidharan has lived in Australia since he was a toddler, but when he speaks of his homeland, he means Sri Lanka.

That’s where he was born, where he spent his first birthday, where his ancestors were rooted. Then in 1983, the South Asian nation descended into what would become a 26-year civil war. His family, part of the country’s Tamil minority, had the means to flee to safety. So they did, going to India, Singapore and finally Australia, in 1984.

“I do think of Sri Lanka as my homeland, but I think of Australia as my home,” he said the other day, his accent redolent of Sydney, where he grew up. “I think I carry the two simultaneously. Sri Lanka lives somewhere in my chest. Always. Wherever I am.”

He was saying this in New York, after a rehearsal of his epic play, “Counting and Cracking,” in which the personal and political are inextricably entwined. Jet lag had a hold of him, but he was game to talk about the show, which has a largely South Asian cast of 19 and a running time of three and a half hours (intermissions included).

An autobiographically infused hit in Australia, where it had its premiere in 2019, it is now in previews at N.Y.U. Skirball in Greenwich Village. Produced by Belvoir St Theater and Kurinji, and presented by the Public Theater and N.Y.U. Skirball, it’s a multigenerational saga about a Sri Lankan-Australian family and the dangerous fragmenting of a society that can drive people to leave their beloved country and risk trying to forge a new life elsewhere.