About
Ashanee Kottage is a poet, theater maker, community weaver, and thinker, learning what ways to do in this world. (And unlearning all the ways of doing that burnt her out throughout her youth).
She loves to write, act, dance, direct, produce, and connect communities. At her core, she is a storyteller, a student of the earth, and a friend. Sri Lanka is home, Washington, D.C. is also now, home. Currently, she is entering her second year as a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at Georgetown University’s Earth Commons and Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
Seeking:
contract projects across research, writing, performing, event curation, and dialogue facilitation
collaborations and learning opportunities in making books, theater, film, podcasts, TV, music, community events
remote employment opportunities across sustainability and conservation
business development advice for a slow and sustainable publishing (and production) company
connections for a book on parks (national, public, community, play, etc.)
Get in touch
ashaneekottage@gmail.com or ashanee.kottage@georgetown.edu
My self-published debut book is available for purchase here!
Sand & Sweat: Poems from 2012-2022 by Ashanee Nihinsa Kottage
Illustrator: Shahdia Jamaldeen
Artist Statement
We are the curators of culture. -- Courtney Sale, Artistic Director, Merrimack Repertory Theatre
Utraque unum means “both as one.” First found in St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, regarding Gentiles and Jews together on coins of the Spanish Empire, and later in 1844 as Georgetown University’s motto referring to the unity of learning and faith.
But what does it mean today? To hold two things at the same time? Particularly two seemingly contrasting things at the same time?
My home Sri Lanka is full of all sorts of contradictions like this. We call our beloved local fried snacks “short eats,” although when you start eating them, it’s long before you stop. We have demarcated traffic lanes but the point is to avoid staying between the lines, and we have the lion on our national flag and our beer cans but not a single one has roamed the island for thousands of years.
I consider myself one of the island’s many contradictions.
In the commercial city of Colombo, where I was born and raised, I was hidden from the 26-year-long civil war, but it wasn’t hidden from me. I saw it in the eyes of my Tamil friends who always had their passports handy, in the scrutinizing nod of army officers every couple kilometers, and in the huddles around a candle during curfew. I was both sheltered from and exposed to what made my home, home – conflict, resilience, and survival.
In my house, I was nangi – younger sister – very different from my aiyya – older brother. I was reminded that I was a woman in the nation that gave the world their first female prime minister, but I was still a woman. One who wasn’t allowed to attend university, have her own ambition or voice.
I was what has been, what could be, and what may never be again, all at the same time. Utraque unum.
In the Fall of 2019, I was on the cast of On the Lawn, a devised, physical play on the implications of the American lawn on climate change. Exploring themes of eco-politics, cultural myth, and the physical idea of home, on stage, I realized that science could be learned and communicated through more than just academic articles. On the Lawn mobilized me to challenge the Western logocentric form of conveying important information – the written word.
As a scientist and a performer, I began to conceptualize a more communal, approachable, storytelling-like medium – science-telling.
However, I’ve been reading and writing my whole life, sitting at the dinner table my grandfather would offer me essay prompts, I’d write poetry to mourn every unfulfilled crush or lost basketball game, and to this day, I feel I communicate myself best through the written word. To take the weapon of my colonizers and make it my art is a contradictory power I now proudly claim.
I hope to continue nurturing these dualities in my artistic practice, sometimes bridging the gap and sometimes sitting in the contradiction – between science and storytelling, writing and telling, Colombo and DC.
