LONDON: A Sri Lankan teenager traumatised by the December tsunami has learned to speak again thanks to a play at the Edinburgh Festival, a report said on Wednesday.

Ruwani Sitara, 15, was so disturbed by the December 26 tsunami which killed seven members of her family that she became mute, The Times newspaper reported.

But she is part of the chorus in Children of the Sea , an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Pericles appearing at the Scottish capital’s world-famous arts festival.

Australian pop queen Kylie Minogue was among benefactors who raised 20,000 pounds to bring children to Edinburgh who were taught to sing and dance as part of drama therapy workshops.

“It was a big shock for me. I lost my sister. I lost my entire household. I could not go to school. What need did I have to speak?” Sitara told The Times through an interpreter.

“I never thought I would be able to come here. It is a totally new experience,” she added.

Toby Gough, the show’s director, chose Pericles because it is about a man who loses his family and his voice and is discovered washed up on a shore.

A 9.3-magnitude quake off Indonesia’s Sumatra island triggered the December tsunami disaster which left at least 217,000 people dead around Indian Ocean shorelines. Indonesia, India, Thailand and Sri Lanka were worst affected.

—AFP