The Man on the Mound
The Man on the Mound (Mutli : ములువి వినికి ; Mulwi Winik) is a traditional theatre piece conceived, written, and composed collectively by the Hunpik K'o Temple during the 14th century after the Divine Monarchy moved its capital to K'alak Muul. The story is that of Hun Ha a lowly courtier in K'alak Muul. It is considered one of the most representative play of the K'iche Neoclassicism, taking styles and themes both from K'iche theater and Chaan Dynasty artistic movements.
Plot
Set in K'alak Muul, The Man on the Hill follow the life of Hun Ha, a lowly courtier. The piece goes through his everyday life, from his recreational life among the bugeoning upper middle class of the 14th century, to his forays into murder by night. The piece maintain a high level of ambiguity through mistaken identity and contradictions : characters are consistently introduced and re-introduced as people other than themselves, and people argue over the identities of others they can see during ceremonies or festivities. Hun Ha himself is consistently mistaken as someone else by other characters, to the point that some Producers have purposefully organized their plays in such a way to imply that Hun Ha does not actually exist and is merely the archetype of the Courtier, a mindset shared by many of the characters who believe to be the only Hun Ha.
The Man on the Hill follow the traditional structure of Mutulese' theatre piece : each act present the same scene, each time with a different twist going from a subtle change to a complete reversal of the theme. Act one present Hun Ha during a religious ceremonies with some other courtiers and conclude with him murdering one of them, Ja Jun, out of jealousy and then receiving a message from his victim valet about Mo Yt'e, Ja Jun' wife, coming to pick him up to participate at one of their friends' residence in an ancestor cult. The second act is almost a repeat of the first, but this time Hun Ha, successfuly pretending to be Ja Jun, spend the ceremony with Mo Yt'e and her relatives. Huna Ha keep mistaking Mo Yt'e female relatives as her and end up confessing to his crimes, but is either not heard or understood. Leaving early, he discuss with a homeless in the street before murdering him. As the piece continue, Hun Ha sanity deteriorates and it become increasingly less clear to the public and himself what's real or not, and who is who. His murders become increasingly sadistic and complex, progressing from simple stabbings to drawn-out sequences of rape, torture, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia. Nonetheless, no matter how many time he return to Ja Jun' appartment to carry his crimes, Hun Ha always find the place clean and the valet even tells him that the household is currently unoccupied. It is unclear whether it's the valet who cleaned up the room and covered up the protagonist' crimes, if it wasn't Ja Jun' house and Hun Ha got it wrong, or if he never committed any crime in the first place.
The piece end as it began, with Hun Ha and his colleagues during some other festivities engaging in banal conversation. In this final act, there is no murder nor confrontation with the city guard or any visible sign of madness except that it is the valet who enter the scene to preside over the ceremony, ending the scene.
Theme
According to modern scholar, literary critics, and art historian Yax K'olom, the piece was largely a critics of the shallow and vicious lifestyle courtiers more or less fell into when in K'alak Muul. The characters are predominantly concerned with material gain and superficial appearances, reflecting the changing nature of the time where religious orders and other secret cults, just like the Hunpik K'o Temple, where the identity of their members faded before the Collective, were losing power in favour of the centralized court dominated by individualist figures ready to do everything to preserve their status or gain the favors of their superiors, the K'uhul Ajaw above all. "Everything is a commodity, including people, for these children of merchant noble houses" an attitude that is further evident in the rampant objectification and brutalization of women and the cannibalization by Hun Ha of his victims.
Hun Ha recurring schizophrenia is also an open critique of the Mutulese society' perception of the self. For the Chaan scholars, there is no "self", someone's identity is entirely dependent on the social role he takes at a given moment. Living Idols, for example, by taking the roles of deities, do become the deities they mimick. It's the logic still at play behind the Divine Lord' claim to godhood and one that was well known by the priests of the Hunpik K'o Temple, a religious order that specialized in Living Idols rituals. By their representations of the piests, the priests thus openly criticized both their role in society and the legitimacy of the K'uhul Ajaw. But, more subtly, it also reinforced that logic by presenting what they considered two different kind of "schizophrenia" : An artistic schizophrenia versus a more personal form. The former, the "traditional" one, which is presented as socially acceptable, while the latter is condemned as anathema.
Influence
The Man on the Mound is considered to be the most influential piece of its era and a monument of Mutulese theater. It is still played to this day in Mutuleses theaters as one of the classics comparing favorably to older works from the Chaan Dynasty. Modern reinterpration are numerous often dropping the "aged" context of the piece in favour of more modern situations where Hun Ha instead of a Courtier is a modern days "Golden Boy", a stockbroker in an unnamed K'alak Muul bank during the 1990s, among other re-imagination. The piece' formless storytelling give it both its strength and its staying power, granting artists and performers unparallel freedom when working with the Man on the Mound.