Don Quijote

"Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts..."

A play by Jakob Nolte after Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - a production by Neues Globe Theater.

The story of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza becomes the raw material for two actors who wear themselves down against the world and against each other until they are utterly spent. From the sprawling prose epic, a template for theatre at its core emerges: reality conjured through language, body, and stage.

Don Quijote, a passionate reader of outdated chivalric romances, finds it increasingly hard to tell fiction from truth. He takes himself for a proud knight, cobbles together a suit of armour, mounts his rickety horse Rocinante, and rides out to fight for his beloved lady Dulcinea of Toboso against powerful sorcerers and fearsome giants - or are they just windmills? Faithfully at his side rides squire Sancho Panza, to whom Don Quijote promises an island and the post of governor, and who repeatedly tries to save his master from the worst disasters. Most episodes end with Don Quijote getting beaten up and having to be patched back together by Sancho as the "Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance".

In the second part, Don Quijote has long since become a literary celebrity himself - as has the "secret protagonist" Sancho Panza. Together they set out one last time on glorious adventures, until Don Quijote is defeated in battle against his own reflection and must admit the futility of everything he has done.