S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack’s acclaimed drama returns for a limited Sydney season. The three-hour, two-interval play is a sweeping saga following one family’s love and loss during the bloody chaos of the Sri Lankan civil war. 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. But how does a family come together again when the world around them is tearing itself apart? The Jungle and the Sea is drawn from real-life testimonies and interwoven with threads of the Mahabharata and Antigone. When it premiered in 2022, Limelight described it as “a soaring achievement”.

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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.