An Interview With Arturo Sastré Blanco

A while back, we sat down with Arturo Sastré Blanco and Claire Becker to record a podcast episode about the technical theater and the performing arts scene in Mexico. We also touched on material from a book they published on marketing for the arts, as well as the scenic technologies college programs Arturo has helped develop. Parallel to the podcast interview, we also wanted to share the written interview since there is a lot that did not get covered in the conversation. This interview focuses on Arturo´s work.

Arturo is a publicist, cultural advisor, playwright, producer and theater director. He is also the author of the book “Art and Marketing. Teoría de Mercadotecnia de las Artes”and he developed the syllabus for different professional courses on Theater and Theater Technologies in Mexico. He was awarded a silver medal by l’Academie Arts-Sciences-Lettres in Paris in 2015.

Can you briefly tell us about you?

Throughout my life I have been restless and curious. This led me to develop different professional areas: advertising, theater, cultural promotion, teaching, and cultural policy. My parents influenced me a lot…

Can you describe how a theater Director and a playwright are seen in Mexico? What are their roles in the theater making process?

Composers, playwrights, and directors promote organizations that are not seen as economic entities. Society cannot interpret that the director corresponds to the director of operations of a company and the producer corresponds to the investor. Nobody understands that performers work, because they are not ordinary workers. Our activity is different and does not have a proper legal status in Mexico. It is not productive like a business company, but it must fulfill the economic obligations as if it were. Just as religion or politics have their own legal status, culture deserves its own.

Our creative industry is one that recognizes the individual capacities of people, that is, the work that only each one of us can do and that is irreplaceable by another person.

Let’s say you are going to direct a play you just finished writing. How would the process look?

It all depends on whether I have the resources and can devote myself to create with those resources. I have already taken care of everything on other occasions and I have decided not to do it anymore. It is part of my training as a producer and marketer that I have fallen into this temptation, now I work with a team that I can trust.

My creative process involves working on the technical issues at the same time as the story unfolds. I let my genius rely on professional theater people. The dramatic and the spectacular are the components of my shows. Now I am writing two great shows and I hope to have all the support I need.

Where does the need of expanding the college programs options to include technical theater arise?

Mexican technicians are incredibly skilled and resourceful. When I was a child I lived on an island in Baja California, my father was a marine officer and lawyer, someone very well trained, so I was able to learn a lot of technical things like how to run an electric generator or hoist a boat’s sail. All of this helped me when I arrived at the theater where everyone had learned intuitively or by imitation. This caused many failures and accidents. When I had a theater in my hands, I founded the first school for stage technicians, which today is a formal career.

How long did this process take and how did you structure the programs? What do you include in these programs?

In each case it was different. In my school (which is now closed) we were very clear about the type of technicians we wanted to form. We had autonomy and all the resources. We used competence-based learning as a method: technical-scientific knowledge, skills and good disposition. At the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) we had to inform the students about technical matters only and the resources are difficult to manage. At the Colegio Nacional de Educación Profesional Técnica (CONALEP) it is very clear that the technicians must work in the entertainment industry, but the resources are not yet available and they must go to the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), where they have their own problems.

Where did you look for references?

We made a detailed study of the curricula of schools in Europe directly from the Leonardo Da Vinci Programme which sought to standardize the labor skills of European countries, as well as schools in Japan and the United States.

Did the unions play a role? If so, which?

Training for technicians who work in the show business is in the hands of influential people in the industry but that requires a higher level of commitment than there is now.

What is the impact these programs have had in the performing arts in the country?

The appearance of the Escenotecnia program took by surprise the show and cultural industries in Mexico. Can this be studied? I think the appreciation for the technicians began to change. Now they are considered co-creators. That gives me a lot of personal satisfaction.

Mexico being a cultural bridge between North America and Latin America, how would you describe the role of the arts building these bridges?

Studying for my next show I found the great cultural reciprocity that Diego Rivera had with the participants in the creation of the Detroit murals.

They are the most finely finished and I believe his apprentice assistants spread that knowledge throughout the United States by painting murals in public libraries that were created to emerge from the crisis of the 1929 recession.

Mexican cinema without the presence of American technicians could not be explained.

Anything is possible as long as there is good talent traffic in a balanced cultural market.

Mexico has a very high relationship of commercial dependence with the United States. In terms of art, I prefer to use the term “sharing” rather than marketing. Sharing instead of competing. There is no competition between true art.

Now, both Mexico and the United States have many integrated cultures. The boundaries of the countries indicate the ownership of land, people and taxes. Culture goes further and is desired by others for knowledge and for free time. At the same time the arts create and reflect the identity of their communities. The art that is part of the culture, it contains the most descriptive and profound of its people. Art is universal and artists are the only ones capable of doing it.

What is importable and exportable speaking of culture are the Works of art, creation and knowledge. We can measure these exchanges and shares in the number of cultural units that transit in artists, works or in product sales and we can be very exact in numbers.

What about the relationship amongst Latin American countries?

Regarding Latin America, we have many problems in the macro-market and we must create systems of sharing by modifying the laws that prevent us from doing so. We are practically unable to import and export all kinds of artistic works and culture. We could be a great market, the largest in the world for ourselves. I have written about it quite a bit and if there are solutions.

Using your analogy of bridges over borders we would be talking about bridges with one way to and ten ways back in commercial terms. Using cultural terms for Mexicans the idea of a balance of exchanges will depend on what we want them to know about us and how we have interacted in the past, how we interact today, and in the future. For example, in the tourism industry, culture is a different variable than the export of products or cultural workers.

The pandemic brought to light similar problems in the arts across different countries and cultures. What are your thoughts on that?

It is only necessary to suffer and create based on what we live. We must understand that it is part of a tragedy.

“Hibris” has made its appearance on the world stage. We won’t know the tragedy just yet.

However, innovation can happen as long as we reinvent the languages that technologies allow us.

In the economy, services had grown in unusual percentages in the last ten years and now artistic and cultural services have everything against us. The problem to solve is to survive and then rebuild a new reality for our industry.

What is the thing you like the most about your job?

Interacting with the actors during the staging, on a stage and what happens in my imagination my intuition and understanding at that moment If you could change anything about your job or the industry, what would it be? I don’t want to change anything in the industry anymore. I have been convinced that it is better to adapt and that is why I want to create at least two great shows and a play before I die. Those who want to follow the lines of academic work can find my writings at academia.edu and my book can be bought at amazon. And of course I will be willing to continue studying as long as my curiosity and my skills allow me to do so…

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