THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Portrayal of contemporary issues undoubtedly establishes a quick connect with the audience. But what happens when too many themes are forcibly packed into a 10-minute-long skit? The result could be close to disastrous as was seen in the performances of some of the teams participating in the English skit competition (high school section) on Day One of the state school arts festival.
Exploitation by corporate forces and the cacophony of the visual media were recurring themes in most of the skits. The murder of young house surgeon Dr Vandana Das, the black magic-related gruesome murders at Elanthoor in Pathanamthitta and indirect references to citizenship-related issues in the country found prominence in most of the performances.
However, some of the teams took up a number of diverse themes to look relevant but ended up in “sound and fury signifying nothing”. “Some of the teams had brilliant scripts but the jarring background music and loud noises ended up drowning the dialogues or the message at the end,” said Sreedhanya R, a parent of one of the contestants. Another complaint was incoherent dialogue delivery, with participants trying to put on an English accent that sounded strange to most of the spectators.
Some of the skits resembled a mime performance, with too much focus on gestures, postures and facial expressions, said Jayakrishnan Nair, a theatre enthusiast who keenly watched the performances.
However, the performance of a few teams stood out for conveying socially relevant messages in a lucid manner. A call to the girl children to equip themselves to deal with abusers, a performance that depicted man-animal conflict, and a message to the general public to be wary of debt traps laid by corporates were some of the themes that were well-received by the audience.
Interestingly, one of the teams took potshots at the Union government by referring to its pet projects such as the construction of toilets under the Swachch Bharat Mission and also the flayed attempts to make the Constitution ‘irrelevant’.
A total of 18 teams participated in the competition. Of them, 15 teams secured A grades and two teams bagged B grades.