We wanted to establish a timeless or multi-period feel to Cervantes’ world.  The prisoners wore clothes with modern elements.  We felt that the Inquisition has too much of a “history book” distance, so we put the Captain and Soldier in a context that evoked Nazi regime.  Then Quixote’s romantic dream of the past was left in a period feel.  The world was at all times still a creation within the prison.  I used specific colors and textures for each locale but they still existed in the framework of our prison scaffolding structure.

An important element of the world was that it should feel like an underground prison.  The stars should be unimaginably far away to the prisoners.  We built our set structure up to the 21 foot grid downstage of the proscenium in our thrust space.  After the overture and blackout, the first moment of the play was seeing flashlights filter through the grid and hearing stomping footsteps on the expanded steel grate over the heads of the audience.  The lights and sounds approached center where a strong amber light shone down an opening and guided the entrance of the main characters and the Captain.  This establishing entrance set the stakes for the severity of the world that imprisoned our characters.

Another moment particular to our production was the Knight of the Mirrors scene.  I didn’t want to create the traditional and expected image of Quixote languishing in front of a mirror.  We didn’t change any of the text, but we had the Knight only as a voice in darkness and Quixote was isolated in a single downspot.  As the Knight confronts Quixote with images of himself as a clown, a fool, and a jester, those images appear behind him in masks.  The final straw that breaks Quixote is the Knight’s attack on his Lady, Dulcinea.  We see Dulcinea step forward on an upper level.  She is cloaked in a rich blue fabric and lit with a soft lavender.  In one beat, the Knight wins; Dulcinea throws off the cloak to reveal the rags of the kitchen slut Aldonza; and the light changes to a mix of red and chartreuse angled from below.  Quixote’s dream is broken and he is conquered.