Man of La Mancha

"...he conceives the strangest project ever imagined. To become a night errant and to sally forth into the world righting all wrongs. His name, Don Quixote de La Mancha!"

The U.C. Davis Performing Arts department produced a live-action/puppet production of Dale Wasserman's Man of La Mancha, a musical version of Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote.

This particular version of Man of La Mancha was unique because of the use of puppets to convey Cervantes' imaginary world. Wasserman's version of the Quixote story places Cervantes in a Spanish prison awaiting trial before the infamous inquisition. Cervantes tells the prisoners the story of his fictitious Don Quixote to prevent them from destroying his belongings. In a typical version of La Mancha, the use of costumes and make-up on the principal actors conveys the story while making the audience aware of the cruel reality of the prison and the inquisition during the 1600's in Spain. By using puppets to convey Cervantes' imaginary world, the director contrasts reality with fiction against the backdrop of a dungeon-like prison.

The production was phenomenal. While the vocal and acting talents were decidedly college-level, the puppetry, scenery, and staging was incredible, clearly professional quality.

Don Quixote has always represented admirable idealism. His impossible dream is one that everyone should have. The ideal of the knight-errant riding with his trusty squire, fighting evil, living to his ideal, honoring a code of ethics that is beyond reproach. In La Mancha, Cervantes, when accused of being an idealist, says, "I never had the courage to believe in nothing." Does it take courage to believe in nothing? If It takes courage to believe in nothing, then how much courage does it take to believe in something. Do you have the courage to fight in your Dulcenea's name, tilting windmills and fighting dragons that no one sees but you? Do you have the courage to stand vigil in the courtyard of an inn, dreaming of how history will remember your legacy?

Perhaps God will grant me this courage. Perhaps he will help me to find, in the depths of my being, the courage to be all that I can, regardless of cost. "And the world will be better for this. That one man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage, to reach the unreachable star!"