At 69, Marcos Ordóñez has been reported dead after becoming one of the best-known voices in Spanish theatre criticism. His career spanned journalism and fiction, and he also taught. He wrote about the stage as more than a series of performances. For him, theatre was shaped by actors, memory and the culture around them.
Ordóñez was a theatre critic for EL PAÍS from 2000. He wrote a weekly review for the Babelia supplement until December 2021, when he left the role because of health problems that had worsened in recent years. The report of his death has not been independently confirmed.
That mix of work shaped his public life.
Ordóñez was born in Barcelona in 1957. He also taught screenwriting and acting direction at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Teaching became another part of his work: he wrote about performers and directors, and showed students how stories and performances are built.
His criticism grew from a close interest in theatre and comedians. He traced links between theatre, cinema, music and popular culture, choosing subjects that brought those worlds together. His approach began with enthusiasm and intuition, not distance for its own sake. He also argued that theatre is fully understood when actors embody it, rather than when it is only read on the page.
That focus on representation gave his criticism a clear subject: the work itself and the people who made it possible.
Ordóñez developed that view alongside a large literary career. His novels included Una vuelta por el Rialto (1994), Rancho aparte (1997), Puerto Ángel (1999), Tarzán en Acapulco (2001), Comedia con fantasmas (2002; Libros del Asteroide, 2015), Detrás del hielo (2006), Turismo interior (2010), Un jardín abandonado por los pájaros (2013) and Juegos reunidos (2016).
He also returned to theatre and cinema in books such as Beberse la vida: Ava Gardner en España (2004), Telón de fondo (2011) and Big Time: la gran vida de Perico Vidal (2014). He also published biographies of Núria Espert and Alfredo Landa. His interest in performers extended beyond the immediate life of the stage.
Those books help explain the force of his criticism. Ordóñez did not treat theatre as separate from the rest of culture. He placed performances among films, songs, popular memory and personal histories.
For EL PAÍS readers and students at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, his work offered a direct way to look at performance. A critic's job was to assess a show and examine what happened when writing became visible through actors, or when the stage revived memories linked to cinema and popular culture.
Marcos Ordóñez built a body of work that joined criticism and creation. His novels, biographies, teaching and years at Babelia made the same argument in different ways: theatre matters most when people encounter it as a living act. Spanish cultural journalism may have lost a distinctive voice, grounded in knowledge of the scene and the enthusiasm with which he wrote about it. The report of his death remains unconfirmed.
