Three Stages of Radio Drama in Chile: from the Golden Age to the New Rise of Fiction Series

Abstract

Following the growth, since 2016, of new fiction and non-fiction sound series in a large part of Ibero America, thanks to podcast and radio on demand, the task of analyzing the history of radio theater as a genre in Chile, from its roots and sociocultural importance to the new ways of producing and thinking about the genre in the 21st century is conducted. On the basis of documentary information, consisting of press archives, audios of radio theater scripts and the few studies on radio and radio theater, three stages can be elucidated: the golden age (1940-1970); the rebirth of radio theater (2003-2015) and the genre current boom period (2016 to present). While there are certain continuities between the first and second period, despite the temporary and technological breakthrough, in the third stage there is a new way of creating and designing these productions, with plots that respond to social and political struggles of groups that are invisible or discriminated in the public space, as well as in the way of circulating and disseminating them, without the radio being the key place par excellence for transmission as happened with the old radio soap operas.