Man of La Mancha

production
Man of La Mancha is set in a 16th-century prison in Seville, under the ruthless rule of the Inquisition. The poet Cervantes is thrown in with impoverished prisoners, who force newcomers to hand over all their possessions. As a form of self-defense, he brings to life the story of Don Quixote: a nobleman, obsessed with chivalric romances, who sets out with his neighbor Sancho Panza to perform “great deeds.” Through Don Quixote, Cervantes shows that the world is not just a place where people end up, but a place you can help shape with your own imagination and actions. To see the world not as it is, but as it could be — that is the thought Cervantes leaves us with when he steps out of his dark cell.

design
From their cells, the prisoners cannot see the world beyond. By drawing them into his story of Don Quixote, Cervantes offers them a temporary escape from the hopelessness of their situation, breaking down the prison walls with imagination. In our design, we do not focus on recreating the prison itself, but on the world Cervantes builds from this “black box.” The empty stage transforms from cell to the landscapes of La Mancha. A single wall first marks the cramped cell, but when tilted, it also evokes the open fields across which Don Quixote rides. A few chairs become an inn; stacked together, they suggest a distant castle. A series of tableaus unfolds — horses, windmills, the inn, the church — inspired by the imagery of Spanish surrealists like Dalí and Miró, for whom logic and reason were as flexible as imagination itself.