Theatre
Rabinal Achi
Rabinal Achí
Anonymous · 1850
Synopsis
The K'iche' warrior Cawek, captured by the champion of Rabinal after years of raids against what was once an allied people, is brought before the lord Job Toj. In a long dialogue marked by the beat of the wooden drum, the two adversaries answer each other in repeated formulas, recalling the plundered villages and the broken alliances; the prisoner refuses to humble himself and demands, before learning his fate, the honours due to a warrior.
Context
The text, called Xajoj Tun, the dance of the wooden drum, was written down in Quiché on 28 October 1850 by Bartolo Sis, keeper of the drama at Rabinal, who had learned it from his father and grandfather and feared seeing it disappear: the tun dances had been forbidden for more than a century and were performed in secret. Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, the village priest, attended a performance in 1855, received the dictation of it and published it in Paris in 1862, alongside a French translation. The dance lasts about ten hours and is performed every year at the feast of Saint Paul, on 25 January.
Who it is for
A dialogue in verse, in K'iche' with translations; the formulaic repetitions, which are disorienting when read, carry the rhythm of the dance.
Prizes and reception
The only pre-Columbian Amerindian theatre to have remained alive, proclaimed a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage by UNESCO on 25 November 2005.