Echoes of the Unseen: Sound, Body, and Memory in ‘Unseen Eyes”

by Vasantha Wakkumbura

When a society lives through three decades of systemic violence, the deepest wounds are rarely the ones that are visibly bleeding; they are the internal, silent scars carried within the bodies and memories of ordinary people.
Working on Nodutu Aes (Unseen Eyes)—an experimental, multi-media devised theatre production directed by Dr. Kanchuka Dharmasiri—was a profound exploration of this exact trauma. Developed through a deeply collaborative process involving students and faculty from the University of Peradeniya, the Theatre of the Melting Clock, and community artists from Kandy, the play dismantles traditional linear narratives to look at how violence, power, and space intersect with class and gender.

The structural foundation of the play rests on a powerful transcreation of two distinct literary voices:

Kumari Kumaragamage’s Poetry (Ureippu Sappada / Noasu Kanwalata): Grounding the narrative in the localized, daily struggles of women, men, and children attempting to navigate life in conflict zones.
Bertolt Brecht’s Poetry: Elevating the discourse to probe the cold, economic, and political machinery that orchestrates war, reminding us that ordinary citizens are always the ultimate collateral.

My involvement in Nodutu Aes spanned across the Music Composition Team, live Vocals, and Acting. Navigating these roles simultaneously within a devised multimedia framework completely changes your relationship to the performance space.

Because the play relies heavily on movement, stillness, and the integration of live videography rather than standard dialogue, the sonic landscape becomes the emotional anchor. As a composer and vocalist, the challenge was translating the sheer weight of Kumaragamage’s and Brecht’s words into a language of sound and silence. You are not just providing background music; you are scoring the “unseen”—the fragmented memories, the tension of displacement, and the haunting reality of spaces that have absorbed historical violence.

As an actor, embodying this meant allowing the body to react to those same sonic cues, reflecting how systemic violence physically and psychologically reshapes us. Nodutu Aes challenges the audience to stop looking at the mere physical wreckage of history and to finally lock eyes with the unseen emotional landscapes of those who survived it.

To the theatre practitioners and multimedia artists in my network: when adapting deeply traumatic historical or poetic texts for the stage, how do you strike the balance between honoring the weight of the original words and leaving enough room for silence and visual storytelling?