Creative takes on familiar topics make drama competition stand out

Young performers at the Kerala State School Arts Festival create emotionally moving plays on controversial issues with creative storytelling.

Making an issue-based play is often seen as an easy way out, but to make a compelling narrative out of something which is too familiar to the audience is quite another challenge. The higher secondary drama competition at the 63rd Kerala State School Arts Festival witnessed quite a few young performers creating magic on stage from issues that were debated endlessly in recent times.

The injustice that was meted out to boxer Vinesh Phogat, who was forced to compete in the Olympics in a lower weight category, became the inspiration for one of the most appreciated dramas of the day, by an all-girl team from Kozhikode. But, in the drama, the boxer is portrayed as someone belonging to a tribal community, with a tragic personal story which brings out a nuanced take on human-animal conflicts. Her tribal background also is used to highlight the ill-treatment that students with reservation face even in some sports schools. It is to the credit of the writer and the energetic performers that none of these felt like someone making a checklist of issues, but instead turned into an emotionally moving play.

Caste politics became an over-arching theme in quite a few dramas, with the team from Kollam district staging one of the most impactful ones, a politically hard-hitting take on sanitation worker N. Joy’s death while cleaning a drain in Thiruvananthapuram last year. Another drama was based on the real life incident of Ayyankali Pada taking the Palakkad District Collector hostage in 1996 in protest against an amendment to a law related to tribal lands. Thoughts of A.K. Ramanujan and his 300 Ramayanas were in the air when a team staged an interesting take on Ravana, from his perspective.

One of the teams took calculated jibes at the Malayalam cinema superstars in a play which had references to the issues faced by women in cinema. The film organisation in the play is named ‘pengal’ (sister), with the celebrity men heading it repeatedly asserting their commitment to women’s safety, although their actions speak otherwise.

Among the plays that stood out purely for their story-telling and clever use of the stage was Nottam, about how false rumours turning upside the life of a man who used to be the favourite of everyone in the village. With sliding panels set up on the ground, the drama had country boats and other eye-catching elements floating on to the stage smoothly. Some of the teams stood out for creative use of the props they had on stage for multiple purposes. In one case, the model of a police jeep turned into a classroom and workshop with rotations to either side.

If school plays had censoring, at least some of the dramas would have faced difficulties, due to their hard-hitting takes on touchy subjects.