VPLA 2024
The Jungle and the Sea

Title: The Jungle and the Sea

Authors: S. Shakthidharan & Eamon Flack

Publishers: Belvoir St Theatre & Currency Press

A mother, in a time of war. Members of her family go missing, one after the other – but she never loses hope. A rich, sweeping new play that combines two great pillars of literature – the Mahābhāratha and Antigone – with the untold histories of the Sri Lankan civil war to forge a new story about surviving loss, discovering love and building a path to justice.

Photography by Sarah Walker

Judges’ report

Ambitious in its scope yet deceptively simple narratively, The Jungle and the Sea is a richly detailed text exploring the complexities of ethnic conflict through distinctly drawn characters, compelling relationships, and empathetic brushstrokes across time. Blending personal testimonies with classic sources, including the Mahābhāratha and Antigone, Shakthidharan and Flack’s script tells an intimate and deeply personal story, at every turn emphasising our shared humanity and powerfully conveying the vulnerability and agency of people navigating the chaos and aftermath of war. A rigorously economical text about surviving loss, discovering love, and building a path to justice, The Jungle and the Sea is accomplished and epic, monumental and moving; a rich and essential work of contemporary theatre.

Extract

About the authors

Shakthi Shakthidharan is a western Sydney storyteller with Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry. He’s a writer, director and producer of theatre and film, and composer of original music. His debut play Counting and Cracking (Belvoir and Co-Curious, Associate Writer Eamon Flack), received critical, commercial and community acclaim at the 2019 Sydney and Adelaide Festivals. Shakthi was also a Producer and Associate Director on the work. The script won the Victorian Premier’s Literature Prize and the NSW Premier’s Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting; the production won 7 Helpmann and 3 Sydney Theatre Awards. It toured in 2022 to Edinburgh Festival and Birmingham Rep to similar acclaim. Shakthi’s most recent play The Jungle and the Sea with Belvoir (co-written and directed with Eamon Flack), again met with rave reviews and had a profound impact on the Sri Lankan community. It won 4 Sydney Theatre Awards in January 2023 including Best Mainstage Production. Shakthi wrote and directed 宿(stay) for Sydney Festival 2022; wrote an adaptation of Zana Fraillon’s The Bone Sparrow which toured the UK with Pilot Theatre; and has in development his first novel, a new play with Belvoir, a feature film with Felix Media and a new TV project. He’s the Director of Kurinji and previous to this was Founder/Artistic Lead of Co-Curious (2018-2022), sister company to CuriousWorks where he was Founder and Artistic Director (2003-2018). Shakthi was the Carriageworks inaugural Associate Artist and is a recipient of both the Phillip Parson’s and Kirk Robson awards.

Eamon Flack is the Artistic Director of Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney. He is a director, writer, dramaturg and script developer. He was born in Singapore and grew up in Singapore, Darwin, Cootamundra and Brisbane. He graduated from the acting course at WAAPA and has since worked around Australia and internationally, from the Tiwi Islands to Sri Lanka and the UK. He has led Belvoir’s new work development in various guises since 2006. His directing credits include acclaimed productions of Angels in America, The Glass Menagerie and Counting and Cracking (with Associate Director S. Shakthidharan) and the premiers of Rita Kalnejais’s Babyteeth and Tommy Murphy’s Holding the Man. His adaptations include Gorky’s Summerfolk, Ibsen’s Ghosts, Sophocles’s Antigone, and Chekhov’s Ivanov and The Cherry Orchard. He was Assocaite Writer on S. Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking, winner of the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Victorian Literary Prize and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Drama. His work has won multiple Helpmann Awards and Sydney Theatre Awards.