Actress Pooja Devariya, who has had a breakthrough year with three releases this year, has won the ‘Emerging Artists Award’ at the Short and Sweet Theatre Festival’s Hollywood edition in Los Angeles. The festival is the largest short theatre festival in the world, and is held at many cities. Pooja Devariya along with Mathivanan Rajendran of Stray Factory were the lone Indian contingent competing with groups from Mexico, USA, Australia and UAE.
The two plays performed by them were ‘My Name is Cine-maa’ and ‘Va Van Gogh’. The award was also given in recognition of 50 performances of the play ‘My Name is Cine-ma’ which has earlier won Pooja and Mathivanan Best Actress and Best Director awards in Short and Sweet Festivals in Chennai, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur. In addition to this, the play has been performed in Sydney and Auckland as well.
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Pooja is a professional theatre artist and has been part of the Chennai based theatre group ‘Stray Factory’ for years. While she made her debut with Selvaraghavan’s Mayakkam Enna (2011) she had not been active in cinema. She played a supporting role in Iraivi and then followed it with two films Kuttrame Thandanai and Aandavan Kattalai both directed by Manikandan. She will next be seen in the filmVallavanukum Vallavan produced by actor Bobby Simha who has also plays the lead in it.