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| David Olsen as Don Quixote de la Mancha |
Synopsis
Miguel de Cervantes and his manservant have been thrown into a dungeon with a dozen or more other prisoners while awaiting a trial by the Spanish Inquisition. As in all prisons, there is a hierarchy of prisoners with The Governor as leader and The Duke as his henchman. The other prisoners rob the helpless Cervantes of much of his clothing and his belongings. It is obvious that Cervantes is a gentleman in a very rough situation.
When the prisoners try to take the manuscript he has been writing about a knight errant named Don Quixote, he fights for it and Cervantes and The Duke agree to have a trial to assess the validity of the manuscript and if he can keep it. The trial proceeds with a reenactment of the manuscript with Cervantes directing the other prisoners in their parts and himself being cast as Alonso Quixano, an eccentric nobleman who fantasizes about being a knight in medieval times.
His trusty servant, Sancho Panza and Don Quixote go off on numerous, ill fated ventures and touch the lives of other people along the way. Most notably is a serving wench/prostitute named Aldonza whom he views as a noblewoman named Dulcinea. Through these misadventures, he comes closer and closer to his final showdown with his arch nemesis, The Knight of the Mirrors whose power is the ability to show people themselves in their stark reality. The Knight of the Mirrors is played by Dr. Carasco, who has been hired by Alonzo's niece to protect her inheritance against Alonzo's mania. Dr. Carasco is played in turn by the prisoner known as The Duke.
When Alonzo is confronted with his true self, he collapses and is taken to his villa where he appears to be dying. Dr. Carasco and Antonia along with their retinues surround Alonzo waiting for him to pass. Aldonza, who has been irrevocably changed by her encounter with Don Quixote forces her way in with Sancho and try to remind Alonzo of who he truly is, namely Don Quixote de la Mancha. In so doing, she starts singing the song, The Impossible Dream to him and he gains strength and begins to sing along, much to the chagrin of Dr. Carasco and Antonia. In mid song, he falls dead.
The prisoners have all been won over to his side by the end of the story, and then the Inquisition enters and takes him away. As he leaves, the prisoners return his manuscript and sing The Impossible Dream to him.
The Concept
Roger Merrill, the director suggested early in the process that he didn't want this Man of La Mancha to look like every other Man of La Mancha.
Linden Snyder, the set designer wanted to perform the show in the round and suggested to the team that this could be an environmental show where the audience became indistinguishable from the prisoners. Since it was being performed in a black box theatre, there was no room for an orchestra so we used pre-recorded tracks for the music. We decided early on to fit body mics on the actors, so some of the integrated audience things had to be altered in order to avoid feedback loops in the sound. This was negotiated early on in the process.
I suggested a "clown car" approach to the trunk of Cervantes' belongings because it seemed magical to have all of Don Quixote's costumes and props come out of his trunk, and all of the other characters' costumes and props come out of it as well for the play within the play. Having a false bottom on an empty trunk also facilitated the actors who were responsible for hauling the trunk down the stairs. It would have been far too heavy to navigate had it been full.
Emmaleigh Egan was originally my assistant designer for this production. As the production moved forward, and I observed her willingness to learn and to work on this project, I upgraded her first to associate designer and ultimately, by the end she was functioning more as a co-designer.
The Costume Design
I was excited to work on this play for a number of reasons. One reason was that I felt the freedom to find a new approach to the work. Another reason was that it was my last opportunity to work with Patty Randall, our costume shop director who was retiring at the end of the semester, so I was able to design costumes for her last show.
We decided early in the process that we would approach dressing the prisoners by asking a series of questions, such as: How long have they been in prison? What was their status before they were remanded to custody? What were they wearing when they came into the prison? What of their clothing was taken from them by the other prisoners? What clothing have they taken from subsequent prisoners?
One of the design choices we made was to have everyone dressed in their prison garb and then as they became characters in the play within the play, they would put on pieces of clothing that had come out of the trunk at some point. This in and of itself is not unlike other versions of Man of La Mancha, but we made sure that there was something of the prison garb still showing on each of the costumes when they were engaged in the play within the play. So it wasn't a complete transformation. Some characters, such as Dr. Carasco and Antonia, who were in multiple scenes and had significant stage time, had a more complete transition. Even so, they retained their prison shoes and pants.
We also had just about everybody transition in front of the audience. This required a certain amount of negotiation with the director and rehearsal time to get the timing of the transitions down so it didn't cause the action to slacken. We talked about this very early in the design process, and before the cast was selected. We also had to train ensemble members as dressers so they could assist. During tech week, we costumed a few technicians as prison inmates so they could show up on stage as dressers to assist in some of the larger transitions. These technicians were not on stage the entire time, only when needed.
Where we really felt the freedom to go where other costume designers hadn't gone before was in the costumes of Don Quixote and the Knight of the Mirrors. I will talk more in depth about these two costumes in this blog post.
Alonso Quixana according to the text in the book is a Spanish nobleman in the early 1600's who has a penchant for the age of chivalry, believing it to be a time of higher moral ideals. He becomes obsessed with this age and fancies himself to be Don Quixote, a knight errant in a quest for higher chivalric virtues. He dons a rusty, old suit of armor that he has found in a barn or shed and travels about the countryside with a servant whom he believes to be a squire. There is a certain amount of dementia associated with this character. In the play, the origin of the armor is never mentioned.
I had the idea that perhaps Alonso, in his obsession with the age of chivalry and his constant reading and fantasizing might have made a stronger commitment to the character he was living and created his own suit of armor, such as a cosplayer might do. I surmised that he would have assembled his armor with things he had lying around. I imagined him going into the barn and finding scraps of leather from the saddlemaker and fashioned a gambeson from them. Then I imagined he would have taken bits of metal, some recognizable and some not and attached them to the gambeson to create a sort of ringmail. His helmet would be fashioned from a bucket.
Originally, I had intended the Knight of the Mirrors to be costumed in the traditional sense with mirrored armor and a shield, but as we went further along in the costume design we began thinking about what the Knight of the Mirrors meant in the context of the story and we changed his costume completely. Those decisions were made after the designs had been approved and we were in the execution phase. So I will write about what we did and why in a different section.
For the renderings, I chose colored pencil on the rough side of Canson Paper.
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| Cervantes at the top of the show and after he has been stripped by the inmates |
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| Don Quixote and Alonzo Quixana |
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| Manservant, stripped, Sancho Panza |
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| The prisoner who becomes Dr. Carasco |
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| The prisoner who becomes Aldonza |
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| Captain of the Guard and an Inquisition Soldier |
After Cervantes has been dropped off in the prison and the guards left, the inmates stripped him and his manservant of much of their raiment which left them with their base costume which facilitated them transitioning to Don Quixote and Sancho. We also asked the director to block the action of that scene to include the prisoners taking his clothing and then wearing it for themselves. At one point, we had a prisoner take Cervantes doublet, check it for size, take his own doublet off and give it to a less fortunate prisoner and don Cervantes doublet for himself, which became the foundation for his costume during the rest of the show.
Cervantes playing Alonzo playing Don Quixote. Layers.
We did the same thing with the manservant. As they stripped him, an inmate got his hat, another got his doublet, one prisoner got one boot and another got the other. Someone else got his hose or stockings so that he could be barefoot to wear his sandals.
The Captain of the Inquisition and the Guards all doubled as inmates in the prison during the show.
Execution
As with most theatres, we have a limited budget, so our renderings for the prisoners, being rags and tatters, were suggestions only and we informed the director up front that we would be relying on what we had in stock and what we could borrow from another theatre. As it was, we decided to keep the prison garb mostly in neutral earthy tones.
We have a reciprocity arrangement with the Utah Festival Opera in Logan, Utah and we borrow and loan costumes between our two theatres. We have a good relationship with them due to some of our faculty members connections to them. Much of the prison garb and a few of the other costume pieces were borrowed from them. In particular, Antonia's gown and Dr. Carasco's doublet were on loan from the Utah Festival Opera.
Our theatre department has been active since at least the 1950's and we have a very large costume storage facility. I discovered that our rags and tatters section was very small. Emmaleigh and I went through all of the period garments for the early 1600's and found many items that the costume shop felt could be put to the sword and we distressed dozens of costume pieces for this show.
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| Prisoners in rags and tatters |
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| More rags, tatters and prisoners |
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| Closeup of distressing |
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| The Inquisition bringing Cervantes and the Manservant to prison |
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| The Captain of the Inquisition |
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| The Manservant (left) and Cervantes (right) |
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| Getting ready to pounce |
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| Attack! Attack! |
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| Choreographed stripping |
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| More stealing |
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| The Governor in Cervantes doublet |
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| The Manservant and Cervantes stripped |
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| The Duke in the Manservant's doublet |
As mentioned previously, the gambeson was made from scraps of leather fitted and lashed together with leather shoelaces that I picked up from a saddle shop in Dubois, Idaho. Once the gambeson was constructed, we applied random metal bits all over it to give the appearance of homemade ringmail. Some of the metal bits were spoons and forks bent into circles.
We attached belt ends on the gambeson in order to attach the one pauldron. The pauldron was made of parts of galvanized buckets that were riveted to leather belts. There were other metal bits attached to the boots and gauntlets, much of which were bucket parts and silverware.
The helmet was made from a bucket with a metal funnel riveted to the top and then a small pitchfork head for a visor. It is quite possible that this was inspired by the Tin Woodsman's hat from The Wizard of Oz and Sir Bedevere's helmet from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I will neither confirm nor deny that. There is a photo that features the helmet at the beginning of this blog post.
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| Doing makeup |
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| Adding the pre-stickied beard and mustache |
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| Attaching the pauldron |
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| The armor over his left armpit is the bottom of a bucket |
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| Photo that features the pauldron |
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| Closeup of the pauldron |
We co-designed the ponies with the properties master.
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| The horses |
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| This photo shows the helmet pretty well |
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| Aldonza and the Muleteers. Sounds like a band name |
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| Aldonza and the head muleteer. Notice the open sores on his head. |
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| For some reason I thought the Innkeeper should have a rat-catcher hat on |
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| Muleteers |
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| Aldonza becoming Dulcinea with Don Quixote |
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| We had a baby onstage almost the entire show. |
We borrowed Antonia's dress and Dr. Carasco's doublet from the Utah Festival Opera. Dr. Carasco was a smaller man and I wished to make him appear larger, so during the build phase of this design I designed a cavalier cape for him from materials we already had in the shop.
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| The Priest, Antonia and the Housekeeper at confession. Pay no attention to the men holding the walls of the confessional |
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| Dr. Carasco's cape |
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| Antonia and Dr. Carasco's cape |
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| Don Quixote and Dr. Carasco |
Don Quixote and Sancho, on one of their misadventures are seduced by some Moorish dancers, which set up the climax of the play where Don Quixote is confronted with his arch nemesis, the Knight of the Mirrors.
The Knight of the Mirrors is traditionally done as a knight in armor that is polished to a mirror finish. We were originally going to do that, but then as we got further into the design, we began to think about exactly what the knight of the Mirrors represented to Don Quixote. His confrontation with the Knight of the Mirrors resulted in Don Quixote seeing his reflection and seeing Alonzo Quixano instead. The resulting shock caused Alonzo to wither as he lies on his deathbed. I found a large, hollow, plastic skull and asked Roger Merrill, the director what he would think if we covered it in mirrors so we had the embodiment of death. He was very open to the idea and liked it. We went forward. We also designed a doublet for him that we covered with mirrors. The small mirrors all over the doublet reflected the fragmentary essence of Alonzo Quixano's mind, and the skull was symbolic of a premonition of death.
Sancho and Dulcinea force their way into the room and convince the dying Alonzo that he is greater than Alonzo Quixano and is indeed Don Quixote de la Mancha and there is the triumphant reprise of The Impossible Dream.
The male Moorish dancer's costume was taken from a show I designed many years ago, The Comedy of Errors. The female dancer costumes were pieced together from fabric scraps and jewelry bits we had in the department.
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| Moorish dancers |
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| First look at the Knight of the Mirrors and his retinue |
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| Shield |
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| The Knight of the Mirrors revealed. We worked out a microphone inside the helmet for sound effects with the Sound Designer |
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| Dulcinea at Alonzo's bedside |
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| I put this picture in because of the fork on the left gauntlet |
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| The inquisition coming for Cervantes and the Manservant. The guard in the rear is wearing a steel cuirass but the guard in the front was too barrel chested for the steel cuirass that we had, so we made a cuirass for him out of Sintra, which is expanded PVC board that we formed with heat guns over a mold. |
Production Details
Director: Roger Merrill
Scene Designer: Linden Snyder
Costume Designer: Gary Benson
Co-Costume Designer: Emmaleigh Egan
Assistant to the Assistant Costume Designer: Marianne Anderson
Armorer: Robert McKenzie
Armorer's Assistant: Natassja Niel
Lighting Designer:
Sound Designer: Antonia Clifford
Technical Director: Ray Versluys
Costume Shop Director: Patty Randall
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