S. SHAKTHIDHARAN AND EAMON FLACK’S ACCLAIMED PLAY RETURNS

The smash hit play by the team that made Counting and Cracking returns for a limited Sydney season.

When violence escalates between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Gowrie does everything she can to keep her family alive. She sends her husband and one daughter to Australia for safety. She takes her other two daughters to search through the jungles of northern Sri Lanka to find her estranged son. But how does a family come together again when the world around them is tearing itself apart? How is peace made? How can we honour the dead?

Drawn from real-life testimonies and woven with threads of the Mahabharatha and Antigone, this is the epic story of one family’s love, caught in the crosshairs of war.

Counting and Cracking was written in honour of those who tried to halt Sri Lanka’s descent into civil war. The Jungle and the Sea is written in honour of those who lived through the war, and the ways they found to uphold their dignity even when everything else was falling down around them. – S. Shakthidharan