Theatrical narratives in the current media system: new forms of intermediality in Latin America

Abstract

During 2020 and 2021 virtuality made it possible to drive the performing arts and generate a new cultural product arising from the need and urgency to find creative solutions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant the cessation of face-to-face artistic activities at a global level and the creation of digital and deferred audiences. This paper offers a journey through the various forms that intermediality took during that adverse period in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia, focusing on those projects that link traditional artistic practices such as theater in current media systems, such as television and streaming platforms.

            We inscribe the textualities examined within what we call post-seriality, a concept that designates a hybrid and dynamic textual system aimed at a digital audience in which discursive formations of diverse origins are articulated. The new intermediate experiences broaden the notion of theatricality and enable unprecedented perceptual forms, by modifying the consumer's relationship with the cultural product through the dematerialization of the aesthetic and sensorial experience and technological mediation. It is proposed to examine the new links established between scenic practice and contemporary audiovisual productions from different narrative and expressive modalities that emerge with digital technology, paying attention to the numerous forms of dialogue of the different artistic languages, with their materiality, their procedures and their specific signifying mechanisms.