Your Review: Ollantay

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17d ago 32:18

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Finalist #9 in the Review Contest

[This is one of the finalists in the 2025 review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

Ollantay is a three-act play written in Quechua, an indigenous language of the South American Andes. It was first performed in Peru around 1775. Since the mid-1800s it’s been performed more often, and nowadays it’s pretty easy to find some company in Peru doing it. If nothing else, it’s popular in Peruvian high schools as a way to get students to connect with Quechua history. It’s not a particularly long play; a full performance of Ollantay takes around an hour.1

Also, nobody knows where Ollantay was written, when it was written, or who wrote it. And its first documented performance led directly to upwards of a hundred thousand deaths.

Macbeth has killed at most fifty people,2 and yet it routinely tops listicles of “deadliest plays”. I’m here to propose that Ollantay take its place.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-ollantay

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