Chile's Drama Renaissance

It took only one of the ten days I spent in Chile during the winter season of 1957 to realize the increased national theatrical activity. During my first visit, in 1917, though one company was touring the provinces under the auspices of the newly founded Sociedad de Autores Teatrales de Chile, few people were interested in the national theatre. During my next visit, in 1937, Alejandro Flores was offering a season of Chilean plays, but the crowds were flocking to the Spanish companies of Perales and Garcia Le6n, and to Diaz de Mendoza and Maria Guerrero, who were performing Marquina's plays with the dramatist himself in one of the roles. By 1958, Chilean dramatists had come into their own. During the intervening twenty years, some students of Santiago's Institute of Pedagogy under Pedro de la Barra had taken old Spanish farces to parts of Chile where the theatre had been unknown, and, encouraged by their successes in 1941 had inaugurated an Experimental Theatre at the University of Chile. Beginning with a budget of a few hundred pesos to spend on plays by Cervantes and Valle Inclan, they had gone on, the following season, with a ten thousand peso budget to introduce Chilean plays as well. With their inspiration, students of architecture at the Catholic University, under Professor Pedro Mortheiru, established El Teatro de Ensayo in 1944. At first, both these groups were much like student drama organizations in North American Universities, but soon the Chileans turned professional. As the government allotted money to the University of Chile to form and run the Philharmonic orchestra and the Chilean Ballet, so it began sponsoring the dramatic company, wi h salaries high enough so that the actors could devote their entire time to their profession. Money was later provided for a school of acting, and finally, realizing that a national drama was impossible without writers, prize contests and scholarships were set up for playwrights. The Catholic University followed a s milar pattern. Beginning with a performance of El Peregrino by Josef de Valdivielso, a contemporary of Lope de Vega, a permanent professional cast was establishe at its Teatro de Ensayo. In the first ten years of its existence, it presented forty-two plays, eight by Chilean authors. By the time I reached Santiago, two active University troupes had their own theatres, with frequent tours to the provinces, and a score of amateur groups were producing drama the length of Chile. In addition, Santiago boasted half a dozen commercial theatres. To provide plays, there were more Chileans writing than ever before in the history of the nations. Of course some of the old plays had been vived, like Como en Santiago (1881) and Casi casamiento by Daniel Barros Grez (1834-1903), and La viuda de Apablaza (1928), by German Luco Cruchaga (1894-1936), as well as masterpieces by Armando Moock (1894-1942) and Antonio Acevedo Hernandez (b. 1886), but the offerings were largely the plays of a crowd of active new writers, self-taught or students at the universities, a surprising number of them women. Among the first to be encouraged by the Teatro Experimental by performance in its Teatro Antonio Vargas was Enrique Bunster, a journalist born in Santiago in 1912. He scoured Chile for folklore. He

Art · Art history · Drama · Literature · The Renaissance · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America