Themes are inspired by issues of daily life and the language is simple.
Here’s a amateur theatre group but with a social purpose. The group named Mad Med Men Juniors, uses the medium of theatre to spread awareness about various health issues like Thalassemia and childhood obesity, among others.
The young minds behind these plays are not from any drama school, but from St Johns Medical College, a prestigious medical college of the city.
“We believe that laughter is the best medicine. We have been involved in spreading social awareness about various issues through our mimes, skits, plays, etc and most of the times we convey our message through humour,” said Nitin Yashas, a member of the team. It’s their underlying theme of their drama that the unconventional name of the group attempts to convey, Nitin added. For the nine members — Jino Joy, Nitin Yashas, Jobin Jose, Babush Jose,
Roshan Valentine, Jeson John, Joseph Eugene, Nidhin Varghese and Arut Chezian — theatre is an art form that is supposed to give back something to the society.
“Mad Med Men was originally formed by the batch of 2003.They have been our inspiration,” said Jino Joy, a student of St Johns Medical College. And in the past few months, the activities of the team had brought smiles on the faces of many children. “Along with the department of community medicine, we performed a skit at Madiwala High School which reflected on the causes behind childhood obesity and ways to deal with it,” said Roshan Valentine.
The team focuses on issues of everyday life. “We choose simple language and try to bring in scenes with which the children can relate to. For example, the childhood obesity skit tells the story of a boy who keeps sitting in a couch and keeps gorging on chips, snacks etc,” said Babush Jose. According to the members, the difficult part is to maintain the comic tone in the play.
“Performing this skit also gave us a chance to understand more about HIV pre-test and post-test counselling. Though the content was more technical, we took care not to compromise on humour,” said Jobin Jose.
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