Iván Arenas

In his youth, Iván Arenas dreamed of being a magician, so he applied to The Magic Castle in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the Oscar Castro Zúñiga High School, he belonged to the School of Architecture of the Catholic University of Valparaíso, where in 1979 he graduated in Industrial Design. However, he never dedicated himself to that, but rather immersed himself in the world of entertainment.

In college he met the group Pujillay, headed by Álvaro Salas, and became an assistant to the group. In one of Pujillay's presentations on Chilevisión (then Channel 9), a producer asked Arenas to participate in the talent show, How much is the show worth?. Salas, who overheard the conversation, urged Arenas to come forward to show his skill with drawings. He did so, and reached the final, obtaining second place.[2]

Iván Arenas began his television career in the program Para saber y jugar, by "Tía Patricia", on UCV Televisión, and in it he made his first appearances on television. Later he would do the same in the program La Naturaleza del Prof. Rossa or Professor Rossa's show, with a modest budget, which simply consisted of "Professor Rossa" teaching through drawings and data things about nature, usually animals, from somewhere in the Valparaíso region.[3]

The three main characters of the show; Professor Rossa, Guru guru, and Don Carter.

Professor Rossa transcended time, after in 1984 he reached his own television space, this time on Channel 13, with El mundo del Profesor Rossa, a program that lasted more than eighteen years. In the first seasons, Professor Rossa interacted with Uncle Valentín (Valentín Trujillo), explaining topics about nature, while he listened, made comments, and incorporated musical accompaniment. Some time later, Professor Rossa discovered a secret passageway inside his own house, which connected him to a subway, a place to which the program moved for a few more seasons, leaving the first set. More characters were also incorporated, giving increasing relevance to comedy, in parallel to educational content. In it, "Professor Rossa" sought to teach viewers (children and their families) interesting features of the animal world, for which he drew pictures, presented pieces of documentaries, and traveled to places where he could observe flora and fauna, or also the culture of other countries. The humorous touch of the program gradually increased over time with the incorporation in 1985 of "Guru-Guru" (Francisco Ossa and later Claudio Moreno), and then in 1991 with "Don Carter" (Juan Alcayaga), the postman. The program became a classic on Chilean television and marked generations of children and young people in the 80's and 90's.[4]

Parallel to this, Arenas participated in other programs of the station, no longer in the role of Professor Rossa, but as himself, as in Maravillozoo, a cultural family oriented show with contests and fauna trivia, co-conducted by Javier Miranda, and sharing screen with Claudia Conserva, Coco Legrand and Yolanda Montecinos. In 1999 he received the "Doctor José Tohá Castellá Award", recognition of scientific and technological dissemination, from the Ministry of Education of Chile.[5][6]

Despite the great success of the show, The world of Professor Rossa ended in 2002 after 18 years for reasons of contract with the board of Channel 13, although this would have been triggered by the broadcast of a video, where the characters expressed themselves with rudeness and made fights as a joke, in what is considered to be the first "viral video" of Chile.[7]

In 2005, Iván Arenas joined the Mega station, where he participated in the Entretemundo programs, which he animated together with Catalina Palacios and later with Ana Sol Romero, and La Ley de la Selva. In 2006, the Parque Safari Rancagua zoo was inaugurated, which Arenas had designed in his hometown, Rancagua.

In 2011 Iván Arenas rescues "Professor Rossa", along with the bird "Guru Guru" and "Don Carter" (his co-stars in The World of Professor Rossa), in the program La mansión Rossa broadcast by the cable channel Via X, premiered on August 8 of that year. In that program, the characters wielded a humor aimed at a more adult audience. That formula was repeated months later in La Dimension Rossa, premiered on May 5, 2012, on TVN.[8]

Since the first semester of 2012, Iván Arenas has been a frequent guest on the program Mentiras verdaderas on La Red, where he appears in the "uncensored" humor specials broadcast on Fridays.

The success of Arenas as a comedian on television, led him to perform stand-up shows, consolidating himself with a type of vulgar humor, very different from the educational and physical humor with which he was associated for much of his career when he was known as "Professor Rossa."[9]

In 2021 he received a Copihue de Oro award praising his trajectory.

Since 2002, Iván has suffered heart problems, which has caused him four heart attacks. He also suffered from colon cancer for which he underwent surgery in January 2022. Regarding his health problems, he declared in an interview in November 2022 that he did not take care of himself, and that he currently has no attachment to life.[11][12]