What Don Quixote is telling us from the stage today
Don Quixote 2.0’ based on Miguel de Cervantes, directed by Konrad Dworakowski of the Animation Theatre in Poznań and the Coincidentia Group in Białystok. Monika Nawrocka-Leśnik writes in the kultura.poznan.pl portal.
Cervantes' Don Quixote is one of those classics that is much talked about, but few actually read. Konrad Dworakowski exhumes the cult hero and conducts an experiment on him. And the theatre gives him plenty of tools to do so. Does the audience leave the performance with a specific thought? I think that as many viewers as many conclusions.
It is true that theatre has an obligation to the classics, but I don't think this is the reason why Konrad Dworakowski reached for Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. After all, we mechanically renew and rewrite what has shaped us. Through the classics we define ourselves. But it is the theatre, ambitiously, that seeks the universal. It wants the spectator to understand. It doesn't get discouraged. It makes further attempts. And Dworakowski does it literally! He reached for Don Quixote a second time - despite the very flattering reviews of the version of the play from a few years ago. He produced both performances with the Coincidentia Group. The first together with the Pinocchio Theatre. The second version involved the Animation Theatre in Poznan.
What is Don Quixote about ? The one by Cervantes about Alonso, a nobleman from La Mancha who sets out into a far-from-ideal world as a misguided knight to help the weak and needy. Or, if you prefer, for a better cause or poetry. Where did he get the idea for just such a life, full of sacrifice and danger? It is the aftermath of his numerous readings of chivalric romances and his conviction that it really happened. In shorter terms, madness. Don Quixote was knighted by the first person he met - an innkeeper who did not live in a real castle. Of course, this one also had his horse, his faithful squire Sancho Panza, who had left his wife and children for him, and a lady of the heart. This fell to Dulcinea of Toboso, a peasant girl with whom Alonso once had a crush. Don Quixote fights with windmills - he thinks they are giants in the service of the sorcerer. He also messes with the wine barrels. And he proudly wears a bowl on his head ... because he's convinced it's a legendary helmet. He gets drawn into an intrigue whose protagonists are supposed princesses. These women have grown beards through a spell cast on them.... Examples of his adventures could be multiplied. But that is not the point.
The myth of the misguided knight and the harmless ‘nobleman in crisis’ is nurtured in school. One treats Don Quixote - through his madness, still indulgently. He blatantly juxtaposes two radically different attitudes: the dreamer and idealist with the predictable realist. Today, this image is less funny. The hero is deinfantilised, his pettiness shown. For how can one sympathise with a man who is always looking for an excuse to fight, who glorifies his every action, even the smallest one, and yet demands praise for it? Not to mention the fact that he does not defend his supposed beloved.... His attitude is increasingly puzzling or even frightening or perplexing - because we already know that idealism can be dangerous, that the manic pursuit of any intention can become an ideology, something fatal for many of us. And such an entanglement of Don Quixote in politics is crushing, even if we go back a couple of hundred years, even if Dworakowski puts a helmet on the hero's head and hussar wings on his shoulders. It is also hard not to think of Poland from a year or two ago. Poland of today.
I prefer to think of Don Quixote as an artist who wants to improve reality with his art, his actions, but does not always meet with the understanding of others. Maybe I'm taking the easy way out, maybe not. For such a character is certainly not lighter when his madness makes him see more or feel more. That he experiences the world more fully. Because then it also hurts more.
Dworakowski turns into dust - though perhaps more into sand, the image of Don Quixote that we have always been fed. And into this sand heap he packs the protagonist. In one of the first scenes, Don Quixote rises from his grave, and at the end lies in it himself. In general, these few tonnes of sand not only make a graceful reference to the early years, childhood dreams and ideals, but also, like many a sandpit, hide scenery elements that appear in subsequent scenes.
Don Quixote 2.0 is an example of contemporary theatre - a combination of theatre of form and dramatic theatre that will undoubtedly go down in history. Not only because of its multi-layeredness, in which everyone will find what they are looking for.... But also the language or rather languages (and I'm not just talking about Valentin Zakrzewski's translation), the technical means, the tools that allowed him to realise it. Don Quixote 2.0 is brimming with great ideas and solutions. Genius sometimes lies in simplicity. The list includes the traditional fans/windmills, which not only cool, but can also be fought with, and everyone looks better with flowing hair. But the knights are also interestingly armed! Among the pieces of armour are ski boots, which allow you to sleep standing up, or knee or elbow pads, which you can use when skating. Don Quixote also had a pilot's cap, goggles and stretched pants.