Success spawns imitators. It is even more ironic when it happens in mimicry, the art of imitation. Few years ago, Ardhra Sajan, now a popular beatboxer, won A grades in successive years at the Kerala State School Arts Festival with her experiment of blending mimicry with beatboxing, a style of vocal percussion which is quite the rage these days. That success seems to have inspired quite a few competitors in recent years to bring in elements of beatboxing into their mimicry performance at the festival.
On Saturday, the mimicry competitions of both boys and girls (Higher Secondary category) had several contestants who turned their vocal chords into percussion instruments. While some of these were quite effectively pulled off, a glut of such attempts also turned out to be a bit of a dampener. The beatboxers have mostly learned the art from YouTube videos. Some mimicry teachers seemed to have trained more than one contestant, evident in how the same set of items were repeated with minor changes by many.
The actor who was most imitated was not the movie superstars or any of the popular young stars, but Sasi Kalinga, who was popular on the stage as well as films. At least eight of the competitors across both categories imitated his popular lines. A close second in popularity was Gopan Nair, who lent his voice to the anti-smoking ad (“Shwasakosham sponge pole aanu”) played in cinema theatres. A number of contestants attempted to imitate the voices of playback singers, with S.Janaki, Vani Jayaram, Vaikom Vijayalakshmi and Shakira, being the most popular ones with their distinct voices.
The ones who stood out in the competition were the few who put that extra effort to string together all their different mimicking attempts into a connected narrative. P.Jagathpriya from Kannur presented her whole performance as a YouTuber’s journey through the Arts Festival venue, recreating the sounds of Kolkali, Duffmuttu, Ottan Thullal and even a mimicry performance of the Israeli air raids on Gaza. Diya Rajesh from Kollam began her performance by recreating the Chandrayaan launch and went on to perform the reactions of various personalities to the launch, to much applause from the audience.
Mimicry, at a time one of the most popular items across Kerala’s stages and which gave the first opening for some popular film actors, is now a shadow of its past. But, the art which Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi last year officially recognised as an art form, still continues to provide some excitement at the State School Arts Festival.
