A mother’s determination to keep her family together. A sister’s determination to honour her brother. A husband and wife’s determination to continue their love.
The Jungle and the Sea features an extraordinary group of South Asian actors, performers and musicians from Sydney, Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand and was written specially for this cast of actors, many of whom also toured to the UK with Belvoir’s multi-award winning Counting and Cracking earlier this year.
Kalieaswari Srinivasan is a powerhouse Indian actor who worked with Peter Brook on his final show, The Prisoner, and starred in Jacques Audiard’s Palme d’Or-winning film Dheepan. Dancer and guru Anandavalli is one of the world’s great practitioners of Bharatnatyam, and this show is a collaboration with her Sydney-based company Lingalayam Dance Company. Wollongong-based Nadie Kammallaweera has been a leading actor in Sri Lankan theatre and worked with the great Italian director Paolo Sorrentino in The Young Pope. Helpmann winner Prakash Belawadi has appeared in over 70 films in India. Jacob Rajan is a virtuosic transformational actor and the creative force behind New Zealand’s internationally acclaimed Indian Ink.
The Jungle and the Sea is an epic story of love, hope, and truth in Sri Lanka and Australia. It is a story of the refusal to surrender to chaos, the struggle for peace; of upholding one’s honour and dignity even when living amongst mayhem and degradation.
A family divided across two continents, living divergent lives, yet also the same. Both share the same joy in sharing a meal, the celebration of unexpected love, the tragedy of loss, the strength of vulnerability and the triumph of resilience.
Resting on two great pillars of literature, the Mahābhāratha and Antigone, The Jungle and the Sea makes timeless figures of ordinary lives, the forgotten individuals of the war, remembering their honour and dignity.
12 Nov – 18 Dec
Belvoir Upstairs Theatre
