The Jungle and the Sea at Melbourne Theatre Company tickets

From the visionary team behind the multi-award-winning Counting and Cracking – S. Shakthidharan and long-time collaborator Eamon Flack – comes ‘another achievement of sustained feeling and empathy’ (The Guardian).

When an unexpected act of destruction splits her family apart, Gowrie takes a radical vow of defiance: she blindfolds herself, refusing to see the world again until her loved ones are reunited. This sets the stage for one family’s epic journey to retain their dignity and safety, as they live through Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war.

Grand in scale and deeply human at its core, this touching work honours those who endured unimaginable loss – and upheld their capacity for love, connection and pride, even amid devastation. Built out of real-life testimonies from the war and woven through with elements of seminal Indian text the Mahābhāratha and the Greek myth of Antigone, The Jungle and the Sea is a theatrical epic of resilience and the pursuit of justice through love.

Featuring live Carnatic music and a cast including Bharathanatyam dancer Anandavalli and Counting and Cracking alumni Prakash Belawadi, Nadie Kammallaweera, Shiv Palekar, Dushan Philips and Rajan Velu, this evocative theatrical monument is a stirring meditation on survival.