Memory and scene reconstruction: Gustavo Meza and the post-coup Chilean playwriting

Abstract

In the post-coup Chilean theatrical scene, there stand out the following scripts: Luis Rivano’s Te llamabas Rosicler (1976), Andrés Pizarro’s Las tres mil palomas y un loro (1977), Gustavo Meza’s El último tren (1978), Marco Antonio de la Parra’s Lo crudo, lo cocido, lo podrido (1978) and Juan Radrigan’s Testimonio de las muertes de Sabina (1979). These works share at least three main features: a) they all are the theatrical debuts of its authors –the last two, probably the most important Chilean playwrights of the last half century–; b) they all stage, although in different ways, the memory of the pre-coup Chile to try to make sense of the social and cultural destruction carried out by the new order held by the military government; c) they all were directed by Gustavo Meza –who in 1974 founded the Teatro Imagen Company (and later the school of the same name), the first group that emerged to oppose authoritarianism from the stage. This paper emphasizes the work with Gustavo Meza’s memory –from testimonial material yet unpublished– to reconstruct some of the senses that theatrical work had in this critical moment of Chilean theatre history, when memory itself became crucial both as creative impulse and as dramatic content.

Chilean Theater

Theater and Politics

Memory

Dictadorship

Gustavo Meza