Flintlock Theatre executive director Anna Glynn on bringing Cervantes’ genius Don Quixote to life in the present

Just over a year ago, I sat with my writing mentor Toby Hulse in the café of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre and he asked me an obvious question. “Why do you want to stage Don Quixote?” I didn’t have a ready answer. There were many good reasons. “It’s full of physical comedy... and we’re good at that... and it’s funny... and there are some good poo jokes in it and... ” Finally, I found myself saying: “I had to watch my Dad die and found seeing him fade away heartbreaking.”

It turned out that it was all true. Because Cervantes was a genius. Writing his epic novel across ten years having experienced bankruptcy, jail (twice) and being taken hostage by Algerian Corsairs, he drew for his writing not only on his extraordinary life but also on that rare insight that only the greatest artists possess, to make us laugh and cry in adjacent moments, to celebrate the hilarity and absurdity of life whilst pushing us to interrogate ourselves and consider our mortality, our frailty and our beauty.

In the character of Don Quixote I felt I was observing a life lived to the full in the jaws of death; that he runs headfirst into the storm only just eluding a mortality that he knows will catch him in the end whilst defiantly insisting on his own reality and claiming the destiny that he sees as his right. I fell in love with that defiance. If you’ve seen loved ones decline, and perceived their shock at the ways that their bodies fail their brilliant minds, you never unlearn the lesson of how short, marvelous and tragic human existence is.

The novel is over 1,000 pages long, with meandering plots that traverse genres, styles and time. It’s really two novels stuck together — not obviously theatrical. Toby somewhat depressingly pointed out that “putting novels on the stage is usually boring and the book is usually better.” But what if, he posited, we staged our take on the book? A re-imagining, as it were. Therein began an adventure that has resulted in Don Q: the exploration of what might happen were Don Quixote alive today. Without the naivety of the 17th century, what would Don Quixote encounter and how would he and the rest of the world respond?

I explored Scandinavian concepts of caring for older people with dementia without disabusing them of their reality and compared it to my experience of visiting a relative in a care home. Both caring situations but entirely different for the patient. What if the older person never becomes aware that they are a patient at all? How can the power of the imagination enable us to transcend our situation and survive, if not thrive?

Getting to know Don Quixote and his creator has been astounding. Seeing the Flintlock ensemble bring our own Don Q to life has been incredible. Now, waiting to see how audiences will all engage with the story we have to tell is nail-bitingly, desperately exciting. I do hope that whatever their response, it prompts them to find out more about one of the most touching, hilarious, compelling novels I have ever read.

Don Q is at The Old Fire Station from October 22-25