The Kalolsavam Play’s Competitive Turn in Kerala: A Practice in Transition

The Kerala theatre has many diversities, but contemporary theatre strives and survives in the competition drama as part of the Kerala School Kalolsavam that dates to 1957. Interestingly, the drama competition is held in multiple levels like sub-district, district, and state level. A total of twenty-five plays come in to the scenario for the final state-level competition. The school-level drama competition has given rise to the competition at local levels. Even the Kerala Government conducts professional drama competitions as an annual feature of the Government activity. This type of initiative was also undertaken during the fine arts society movement. These annual drama competitions catered to both full-length and shorter plays. The shorter plays became the strength of amateur theatre in Kerala. One-act plays or Ekanga Natakam became one of the major items in Kerala’s dramatic literature field. It gave rise to many playwrights who started writing plays only for these kinds of competitions. The paper looks at the Kalolsavam plays from 2018 to 2023 focusing on their diversity and importance, and thereby also addressing questions on how contemporary theatre brings in its forms, content, and stamp through these plays and how contemporary is this practice.