Listen "Your Review: Ollantay"
Episode Synopsis
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
More episodes of the podcast Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Links For September 2025
10/09/2025
What Is Man, That Thou Art Mindful Of Him?
10/09/2025
Open Letter To The NIH
02/09/2025
In Search Of AI Psychosis
02/09/2025
Your Review: Dating Men In The Bay Area
24/08/2025
In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis
20/08/2025