Until recently, my husband, Chris, worked in an independent bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota. One day one of his colleagues asked him about the kind of work I do. “Research on contemporary Mayan theatre,” my husband replied. Another colleague, overhearing them, joined in. “Oh, she should talk to my daughter,” she said. “She’s a professional mime.”

It is not unusual for people to mishear the subject of my work. To the U.S. ear, the words “Mayan” and “theatre” don’t go together as smoothly or as familiarly as do the words “theatre” and “mime.” This is partly a function of critical...

The beginning of the twenty-first century is a turbid time to be writing about culture, cultural identity, or any scheme by which human beings and our endeavors come to be categorized in some way. We emerge into this millennium accompanied by a cacophony of voices that echo from the street level “up” to the halls of academe, engaged in continuing debates over the nature of human affiliation and how to translate these debates into social and political policy at both the local and the global level.¹

For example, I call this a book about “contemporary Mayan theatre,” but each of...

Thepopul vuhrecords a powerful moment in the prehistory of the human race: before earthly time could begin, it reveals, one of the final deeds of its twin hero-gods was an act of theatrical illusion. In a command performance staged for the lords of the underworld, one twin apparently beheaded the other, cut out his heart, and then brought him back to life. When the delighted lords demanded that the trick be performed on them, the brothers obliged, with one key difference: this time it was not an illusion, and the beheaded lords did not rise again. Thus the...

In late summer 1996, several subway stops in Mexico City featured a billboard advertisement declaring: “More than a news item, Chiapas is . . .” Behind these words were pictured all the enticing flora and fauna that southernmost state has to offer: lush vegetation, colorful jungle birds, waterfalls, jaguars, monkeys—and a woman in native dress, weaving on a loom. The billboard assured travelers that Chiapas was still the unspoiled wilderness of exotic creatures—including the Maya—they might have heard so much about, before those irksome Zapatistas came, with their ski masks and their bullet belts, and scared everyone...

Given the history of twentieth-century rural and campesino theatre movements in Mexico, one might expect a group called Laboratorio de Teatro Campesino e Indígena (LTCI), or Farmworker and Indigenous Theatre Laboratory, to have pursued an agenda of theatre for social ends, performed for or with local farmers and their families, aimed at the concerns of small communities in the Mexican countryside. Although this work is part of its activities, it is a small part overall. The term “Laboratorio” provides an equally good clue to the group’s work and working methods, calling to mind the experimentation of such artists as Jean-Louis...

Although the Yucatán peninsula first came to the world’s attention through excavations of its ancient past, in all of Mexico it is perhaps the region most oriented to the postmodern present, with its tourist-friendly mix of beaches, resorts, ruins, and Old World charm. But geography, politics, economic history, educational systems, and theatre also factor into the peculiarly Yucatecan cultural mix. This chapter examines the relationships among these factors, focusing particularly on grassroots theatre in the Mayan language as it has come to articulate new ways of understanding cultural belonging on the peninsula.

Since the eighteenth century, the Yucatán peninsula has...

About a year after my first research trip to Mexico, I had dinner with a U.S. dance scholar working on similar issues of performance and community. At the end of a long conversation about our respective projects, she fixed me with a hard look and asked, “So. After all that, where do you think therealMayan theatre is happening?”

This book has been an attempt to address that question by situating “real Mayan theatre” within the very discourses of cultural desire the question itself reflects. I have argued the focus should not be so much on the target—a...