There is a contemporary touch to the themes selected by participants in the Mono Act competition in high school (boys) category. Majority of them presented issues that have drawn wide media attention.
The social renaissance in Kerala that is now under threat from revival of casteism in new forms, social discrimination, poverty, growing intolerance in the country were among the topic presented by the young Mono Act artistes. Many of them drove home their respective social messages through their gifts of acting and narration. Amal Jose of SJHSS Kannur, for example, highlighted the issues connected with suicide of Rohit Vemula, a Ph.D student at Hyderabad University, and engineering student Jishnu Prannoy. For Goutham S. of VSS HSS Koyppally, Alappuzha, Soumya murder and the controversial court verdict in the case were issues delivered through his performance. The memory of Ayyankali and his ‘villuvandi yatra’ to assert the rights of the downtrodden was revived by Najm Abdul Asees of Nochad HSS, Kozhikode, who warned that renaissance is now under threat. Ameen S.R. of LMHSS Vattappara, Thiruvananthapuram, highlighted cruelty of ragging in educational institutions. Madhav Ram K.M. of SMHS, Pazhambalakkad, Palakkad, and Yadukrishnan Karippath, GHSS Kuttamath, Kasaragod, enacted the plight of Dana Majhi of Odisha who had to carry his wife’s body for nearly 10 km.
Nived Murali of MESENHS, Olavakkode, Palakkad, chose a script based on M. Mukundan’s story ‘Anaghayude Achan’, while Niranjan Krishnan, Anthikkad HS, Thrissur, used ‘Sara Joseph’s story ‘Rajyadroham’ to highlight social evils of today.
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