Latino Theaters for Social Change

these dramas, which persisted to grow more sophisticated with time. Known as passion dramas, miracle performance and morality acting, they continued their unrelenting close relationship with the Church and church festivals, but began to institute elements of typical characters that were more current in nature.

Throughout the 16th & 17th centuries the Latin theatre increased –with religion as its primary foundation. During the 16th century, they celebrated a religious festival three times annually regarded as the Corpus Christie festival which highlights the power of the Church. At the celebration, they performed dramas known as autos sacramentales. The autos sacramentales had some of the features of morality plays as well as some features of cycle plays, and they presented human as well as mystical characters. The plays that were conducted; sometimes old acting and sometimes new, were carried out by a single company and later on by two companies. The dramas were presented on carros, or carts, which held everything needed for presentations.

Pre-Hispanic ceremonies were how the natives came in contact with the religious. Spaniards exercised plays to Christianize and conquer the indigenous community of the Americas in the sixteenth century period. Theatre was a potent instrument in manipulating inhabitants already comfortable to spectacle. Theatre became a means for political influence on Latin America by colonialist plays by using indigenous routine practices to stage-manage the population. Furthermore, it presented a way for the indigenous inhabitants who were forced to involve themselves in the drama of their own downfall. In 1599, the priests even used dead bodies of Native Americans to represent the dead in

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