NAHUA THEATRE
Clay Performance Mask, unknown Aztec artist, 1500
The morality plays were translated in Nahuatl and given Nahua cultural highlights. Morality plays are Catholic plays that provide the audience with a certain Christian message either relating to a story from the Bible or one developed with Christian themes. The Nahua people were no longer free to live the way they had in 1520. They were now colonized, living in their own land, but under colonial rule of the Spanish. Their belief system was replaced with Roman Catholicism. However, what they understood from this religion had different connotations. The meanings of one god who was devised of three parts and a holy mother who conceived a son without having sexual relations were new concepts. Realizing ritual performances and lively celebrations were a staple in the lives of the Nahua people, Franciscan monks selected Nahua converts to translate morality plays from Iberia into a tool for religious acculturation.
Closer Look...
The plays became a success in many ways. The first was gathering a larger audience together as they had done before; this was comfortable for them. The second was how engaged the audience became as they listened to their fellow Nahua actors perform these morality plays. Lastly, the plays instilled a specific religious message that seemed more effective than a Franciscan monk trying to preach a sermon in broken Nahuatl. What is not clear is how the message came across. Whether it was accurately translated, or was translated correctly but still had a very strange message to a people of different religious background, or whether the Nahua actors put forth their own meanings in word or actions during the performances of these plays is somewhat unclear.
Franciscan friars burning traditional books and clothes. The images in the fire represent the destruction of the old gods whose masks correspond to the twenty signs of the tonalamatl
Diego Valadés Rhetórica Christiana
Perugia: Pietro Giacopo Petrucci, artist unknown, 1579
A Catholic friar shares a sermon to the Nahuas.
The focus of this paper is to analyze the reception of the moral plays by the Nahuas as this emphasis is underrepresented or missing entirely from the current historiography of the topic of the Nahuatl Theatre as a whole.
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