Ruwanthie de Chickera

Ruwanthie de Chickera also spelt as Ruwanthi de Chickera (born 1975) is a Sri Lankan playwright, dramatist, screenwriter, activist, writer and theatre director. She has engaged in research on various fields including politics, sexuality, education, religion, arts, violence and culture. She jointly won the Gratiaen Prize along with Lakshmi de Silva in 2000.

Biography She pursued her primary and secondary education in Methodist College, Colombo. It was at Methodist College that she developed an interest in writing, especially focusing on drama, stage plays, and writing scripts for inter-house school plays. She became more serious in writing aspect when narrating drama scripts during school days. She had grown up as a passionate reader since her childhood and she almost became passionate about Enid Blyton's novels. She considers Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood and Arundathi Roy to be her favourite authors. Her interests in theatre and reading books propelled her to become a screenwriter. Middle of Silence was also staged in London's West End, and Ruwanthie de Chickera became the first Sri Lankan playwright to receive the distinction of having her play staged in London's West End.

She obtained her Honorary degree in English literature from the University of Colombo. She received her Master of Arts in Applied Theatre from the University of Manchester. She wrote the screenplay for the 2008 Sri Lankan-Italian comedy film Machan, which was based on the missing Sri Lanka national handball team during the 2004 European tour. Machan received critical acclaim for the storyline and screenplay, for which it gained wider international recognition.

She serves as the Head of Research and Writing of Arts and Cultural Policy Desk in Sri Lanka. She is actively involved in the Cultural Policy Desk framework, which has been implemented to draft a national cultural policy in line with the principles of the Government of Sri Lanka. She directed the play Dear Children Sincerely, which was staged at the Lionel Wendt Art Centre in 2017, and it was based on seven singular events that articulated a dramatic change in Sri Lanka's history over the course of seven decades. She also directed a play titled PING! Virtually everything is fine which was inspired based on the increasing trend of digital dependency among youth population in Sri Lanka. PING! Virtually everything is fine was also developed by Ruwanthie de Chickera in collaboration with Lihan Mendis in order to raise awareness among young people in Sri Lanka to be mindful of their digital usage and screentime. She has also written journal articles for The Island and Groundviews. She has also took part in several international conferences and workshops in theatre and writing.