S. Shakthidharan enjoyed international success with his epic 2019 play Counting and Cracking about a Sri Lankan-Australian family across four generations. His latest stage work is a more intimate, 90-minute piece, featuring four performers. Co-produced with Belvoir, The Wrong Gods explores the tension between tradition and progress in a valley in India. The play delves into the relationship between a mother and her daughter as they navigate their conflicting desires against the enormous social upheaval brought about by the building of India’s enormous Narmada River dam project. Shakthidharan co-directs with Hannah Goodwin.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

Australian playwright S. Shakthidharan is one of the most exciting voices in theatre today. His epic play Counting and Cracking wowed audiences in sell-out seasons across the country, alongside triumphant tours to the UK and now New York. Melbourne audiences can again witness his talents in full flight with this new work conjuring a community confronted by the bold promises of globalisation.

For fifty thousand years, soldiers and missionaries and kings and queens have tried to conquer this remote Indian valley, and for fifty thousand years Nirmala’s ancestors have kept them out. But what if out is exactly where her daughter Isha wants to be?

When a stranger arrives with an offer too good to be true, the two must reckon with the costs of a devil’s bargain. Family, freedom and the fates of thousands will ultimately rest in their hands.