Don Quijote (UA) - World Premiere with Opening Night Party

DON QUIJOTE (UA)
A play with music and shadows after Miguel de Cervantes

With Arwid Klaws, Bernd Tauber, Hugo Ziegler and a child
Shadow theatre: Robert Buschbacher, Anne Brüssau
Music: Aitor Reynders
Adaptation and direction: Jan Jedenak
Composition: Marijn Simons
Co-direction and dramaturgy: Tonio Kleinknecht
Set and costume design: Stephanie Krey, Jan Jedenak
Construction and development of shadow figures: Robert Buschbacher
Dramaturgy: Tina Brüggemann

Michael has lost touch with the present: in his inner world he is Don Quijote de la Mancha, his son Sanjo is Sancho Panza, and the carer is Dona Belisa, Quijote's housekeeper. Without knowing it, he is spending the last days of his life in a care home for people with dementia.

When Sanjo and the carer begin to play along with Michael's world, the line between reality and fiction blurs. Amid the often grey routine of care, warm and funny encounters emerge - alongside poetic images of windmills, heroic battles and nocturnal visions. The production weaves motifs from Cervantes' novel with biographical fragments from the old man's life; shadow play, puppets and live music on electric guitar and loop station make visible what is happening inside him.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) gave the world Don Quijote, a figure of world literature whose battle against windmills has remained a central motif in art and philosophy ever since. "One wants to keep meeting him throughout one's life," writes Orhan Pamuk about the character Cervantes conceived after a turbulent life as a soldier, captivity under pirates and service as an intelligence agent for King Philip II - ultimately in a prison in Seville.

The performance will be followed by an opening night party.