Cut Chilli by Chenturan Aran

“Your face is an ancestral mountain, carved by mothers who dreamed you beyond their lifetime.”

Jamie was abandoned as a baby in Sri Lanka. At least that’s what Katherine told him, as she raised him in the beach town of Mandurah, Western Australia. But when Jamie falls for Zahra, an activist and podcaster who tells him about the shady history of international adoption, he begins to question his adoptive mother’s narrative and wonders why he’s never seen his adoption file.

Now Jamie’s heading home, with a cultural lineage demanding to be felt and a determination to uncover the truth of his past, all the while with Zahra recording live for her podcast series, “Decolonising My Boyfriend”. The truth, however, is more complicated than expected, and Katherine fights to cover up an old wound being opened, one that will reshape their family forever.

Nominated at the 2025 NSW Literary Prizes, this scorching new comedy from Chenturan Aran is a banquet of cultural identity, displacement and ancestry. Inspired by pervasive adoption fraud in Sri Lanka, this is a play about difficult histories, and how we manage open dialogue to find vulnerability, truth, and acceptance.

GET TICKETS HERE: Darebin Arts