Longhouse
Writing Places Real and Imagined
Bringing together three internationally acclaimed playwrights, Jarunun Phantachat (Thailand), Ahilan Karunaharan (New Zealand) and S. Shakthidharan (Australia) this conversation explores how people, place, and politics are conjured on the page and brought to life on stage. These plays navigate collective memory, identity, and culture across borders, opening nuanced dialogues about how communities connect, remember, and imagine themselves in different global contexts and futures.
Hosted by Tessa Leong, Artistic Director of CAAP, the discussion will delve into their writing processes, the role of place in shaping stories, and how audiences in different contexts receive and respond to their plays.
Presented in partnership with Kyoto Experiment, this special event is born out of the International Asian Playwrights Focus, a network of cultural leaders across festivals and organisations in Asia with a mission to brng Asian and diaspora stories to international stages. The Focus is committed to building connections for Asian Playwrights, creating networks for them outside their home countries. This begins a series of events across the region over the coming year among the cohort.
The conversation will be conducted in English.
About Longhouse
In some traditional societies, the Longhouse is the meeting place where the village gathers to share stories and bond as a community. CAAP’s Longhouse Program combines talks, performances, masterclasses and workshops. Everyone interested in Asian Australian contemporary performance is welcome to attend.
Panellist Bios
Jarunun Phantachat
Jarunun Phantachat is an actor, playwright, director, producer and Co-Artistic Director of B-Floor Theatre, a leading physical theatre company based in Bangkok. She has performed in and produced numerous B-Floor works, touring extensively across Asia as well as to Denmark and the US. Her major productions include The Other Land, Demographic Survey, Lear and His 3 Daughters — named one of the top ten productions of the decade by The Bangkok Post — and Test of Endurance, which won Best Direction from IATC–Thailand in 2015. Jarunun received the prestigious Silpathorn Award in 2014 and is co-founder of Collective Thai Scripts.
Ahilan Karunaharan
Ahilan ‘Ahi’ Karunaharan is a director, writer, dramaturg, actor and producer championing South Asian storytelling across stage and screen in Aotearoa. Born in the UK, raised in Sri Lanka and Pōneke, and based in Tāmaki Makaurau, his work explores memory, nostalgia, dislocation, loss and grief. His sprawling epic Tea premiered at Auckland Arts Festival in 2018, weaving together workers’ rights on a tea plantation, the protests during Sri Lanka’s violent uprising, and two brothers grappling with the legacies of colonial rule. His other plays include My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak, A Mixtape for Maladies and The Mourning After [Reimagined]. Karunaharan received the Excellence in Leadership Award at the Auckland Theatre Awards in 2019 and was made an Arts Foundation Laureate in 2020. He is a regular collaborator with Silo Theatre, Auckland Theatre Company and Tawata Productions.
S. Shakthidharan
S. Shakthidharan is an Australian storyteller with Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry. His plays Counting and Cracking (“One of the great Australian plays” – The Guardian), The Jungle and the Sea and The Wrong Gods have won critical, commercial and community acclaim and toured extensively. Gather Up Your World In One Long Breath, with Powerhouse Publishing, is his debut book. It will be accompanied by a major companion artwork with the Museum. Shakthi has a feature film, 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.
Contemporary Asian Australian Performance is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, and assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
The International Asian Playwrights Focus was formed in 2024 and comprises of: Seoul Performing Arts Festival (South Korea), National Theatre and Concert Hall (Taiwan), West Kowloon Cultural District (Hong Kong), Kyoto Experiment (Japan), SquareSums&Co and Satellites (New Zealand) and Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (Australia).