The San Javier International Theater, Music and Dance Festival recognizes, in its 2023 edition, “the value of the professional career” of the cultural journalist and theater critic of LA VERDAD, Antonio Arco. The organization of the contest, of which David Martínez, also Councilor for Culture of the corporation chaired by the popular José Miguel Luengo, is the director, highlights “Arco’s constant support for a festival whose development he has contributed with his theater critics, who stand out both for the singularity of a recognizable literary style, as well as for its didactic character and its amenity».
The recognition of Arco, which has also been joined by Pepe Ibáñez, deputy director of the festival until 2022 and its director at other times in its history, also celebrates “its incessant encouragement to the creative work of authors, performers, directors, and many other professionals make it possible for a new show to arrive on stage». They also highlight his “respect for his readers, to whom he offers rigor, independence and passion for the theater in his work”.
Related to this summer cultural event, Arco is the author of the books ‘Sal al Teatro. Stellar Moments of the San Javier Festival’ (2004), which includes both criticism and interviews with great figures on the scene; and ‘Call me Theatre. 50 Festival de San Javier’ (2019), which includes 31 theater reviews of productions enjoyed in its latest editions, and includes texts dedicated to the author of the actresses Concha Velasco, Verónica Forqué and Esperanza Clares; the actors Ginés García Millán and Pablo Derqui; the stage director and set designer Paco Azorín; the stage director and current Minister of Culture of the Community of Madrid, Mariano de Paco; and David Martinez. The texts of ‘Call Me Theatre’ are accompanied by images by the renowned scene photographer Pepe H; Other texts of his for publications dedicated to scenic creators are ‘Pippo Delbono. The theater of rage’ and ‘Tadeusz Kantor. The dead class’.
Salvador Távora, director of La Cuadra in Seville and one of the most internationally recognized Spanish stage creators, wrote in his prologue for ‘Sal al Teatro’: «Antonio Arco is not only contributing as a journalist and critic to leaving the story in newspaper archives of the theater, the real history of the theater above that other that capricious specialists publish in twisted judgments; it is that Arco, with his valuable contribution, is not going to be, but that it is already, today, a fundamental part of that history of the art of theater ».
A tireless explorer of the interview genre and the literary column, as he does in the Sunday cons of LA VERDAD, Antonio Arco has published a selection of his interviews in the books ‘Mujeres. Interviews with 31 winners’, ‘Monsters. Interviews with the greats of flamenco’, and ‘What were we thinking about. Interviews with philosophers, poets and creators’ (2017). From his collaborations with plastic artists, embodied in his journalistic works, texts arise such as those written for catalogs by, among others, Manolo Valdés -National Prize for Plastic Arts (1983)-, Bernard Plossu -PHotoEspaña Prize 2013- and Juan Uslé -Prize National of Plastic Arts (2002)-.
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