Don Quijote

In the organizer's words:

Play by Mikhail Bulgakov

Director: Sascha Hawemann

Stage: Alexander Wolf | Costumes: Ines Burisch | Dramaturgy: Jan Pfannenstiel

approx. 120 minutes no intermission

The Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov sits disillusioned in his apartment in Moscow in 1938. The Soviet authorities have removed his plays from the repertoire and banned the publication of his novels. Then the Vakhtangov Theater commissioned him to adapt Miguel Cervantes' DON QUIJOTE for the stage: Alonso Quijano sits just as dejected in his village of La Mancha, spending his time reading chivalric novels and losing himself in their ideals. He gives himself the name Don Quixote and sets out to chase after the stories in his books. His companion and weapon bearer Sancho Panza christens him the "Knight of the Sad Countenance". Traveling on an old nag and a donkey, they want to "restore to the world the justice that has been irretrievably lost", free a supposed princess and fight giants in the shape of windmills.

But for Bulgakov, the tireless battle against seemingly overpowering opponents is more than just a metaphor or a proverb. His apartment was repeatedly searched, manuscripts and diaries confiscated and applications to leave the country rejected. However, neither Bulgakov nor his hero Don Quixote let violence and mockery, arbitrariness and humiliation destroy their imagination. Don Quixote takes refuge in his chivalric novels and Bulgakov flees from the dictatorship into fantastic literary worlds. On the one hand, he writes the posthumously world-famous novel THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, but on the other, he falls into paranoia and depression.

In his production, Sascha Hawemann relates the world-famous material to its author: a ride through the Spanish steppe and the Moscow of the Great Terror, a struggle against the contradictions and absurdities of a system, a hero with a tragicomic dimension - despite or perhaps because of his inability to separate reality from his dreams. This Don Quixote must die in the end because his vision has no place in a world without imagination.

Sascha Hawemann studied directing in Belgrade and Berlin and was in-house director from 1995 to 2000, from 1997 he was head director at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam; from 2008 to 2013 he held the same position at Leipzig's Centraltheater. He has worked at theaters in Berlin, Hanover, Dortmund, Nuremberg and Schwerin, among others. At Theater Bonn, Sascha Hawemann has directed plays including WUT by Elfriede Jelinek, VOR SONNENAUFGANG by Ewald Palmetshofer, ONKEL WANJA by Anton Chekhov and most recently DER NACKTE WAHNSINN by Michael Frayn.