The Greatest Discovery: Radio Theatre in Italy during Fascism and the Contribution of Federico Fellini

In the early 30s, in Italy, theatre for the radio was an unpopular genre both among critics and for the public, but the popularity of the genre increased thanks to young authors who worked in the ‘radio revue’ and ‘radio-scene’ subgenres. Federico Fellini was among them. He contributed to the renewal of radio theatre with his fantasy, irony and humanity. From 1940 to 1943 he wrote about forty radio scripts for the EIAR (Italian Corporation for Radio Broadcastings). Although often overlooked, as they are unpublished, his radio-scripts already show evidence of so-called ‘Fellinian’ surrealism. My intervention will first discuss the Italian radio context of the time and then explore the impact on Fellini at EIAR. The paper will then focus on the radiodrama ‘Invenzioni’ [Invention] written in 1943, which tells the story of humanity’s greatest invention: the dream. ‘Invenzioni’ is also one of the three radioplays by Fellini translated and played by Hungarian Radio in 2001, under the title ‘The Greatest Discovery’.