Gueguense

One theatre piece that combines indigenous American and European traditions is Gueguense, a play still performed each January in Nicaragua as part of the Feast of Saint Sebastian.

The title character is a trickster who gets the better of Spanish colonial authorities. Its spoken dialogue, which combines Spanish with indigenous languages, is interspersed with dance sequences.

Performers don masks, some with human faces and others resembling the heads of mules. Like a number of other folk plays from Latin America, Gueguense ends with a large festive dance known as a mojiganga.