Directors notes on the creative process:

We are often asked why we produce a particular play. The simple answer is that almost all of our work is developed in response to our other work. Our production of Don Quixote developed from a number of coincidences. Genevieve Swift (our artistic director) had been working (as an actor) on a Commedia dell' arte production directed by Ollie Crick at Tewkesbury Roses Theatre-a brilliant play based on Shakespeare's lost play 'Cardenio' -which has the same source as Cervante's Novel.
At the same time Jason Maher was engaged as writer in residence on an NHS research project working with early-onset Dementia and Alzheimers sufferers. He was struck by the similarities between Don Quixote's madness and the condition of the people he was now working with-he had been introduced to 'Don Quixote' during a research trip in Spain a year earlier and was commissioned to write a response to the novel as part of it's 400th anniversary. The original response had been a much more straightforward physical theatre comedy but the work which Jason was undertaking on his residency and the production of 'Cardenio' Genevieve was involved in convinced us to rewrite. The original play underwent six re-writes enabled by an intense workshop process before the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham and the County Council's Theatre Production Office co-funded our new production. Ollie Crick came on board as movement director, with Jason directing the completely reworked script. Our play features a Don Quixote who people will recognise -and the main episodes and characters from the novel are there- but our play isn't a slapstick comedy. It is a physical, modern funny and deeply moving story about family, friendship and love.