Macaw: Creative Writing & Latin America: Mesoamerican Motifs at Tulsa Zoo

Bruce Dean Willis

is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at The University of Tulsa. His research and publications focus on diverse aspects of poetry and performance, and expressions of Indigenous and African cultures, in Latin American literature, particularly Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

TIME FOR CHOCOLATE is available for purchase through One Act Play Depot! A brief description:

An intoxicating evening of music, poetry, and chocolate... in pre-conquest Mexico!
Based on a fifteenth-century dialogue among nobles schooled in rhetoric and philosophy, the play pits father against son in a war of words over the power and beauty of artistic expression.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Mesoamerican Motifs at Tulsa Zoo

The Tropical American Rainforest exhibit at Tulsa Zoo features an anaconda, a jaguar, sloths, marmosets, spoonbills, howler monkeys, poison dart frogs, and many other species. The interior of the building itself was carefully decorated with copies of design motifs from the Maya and other Neotropical cultures, and the entrance is flanked by a replica of a colossal Olmec head sculpture. In the photos below: mural (Bonampak) and sculptural reproductions from the exhibit, including part of a sequence showing the Mayan numerical signs.