What if you could be a knight? Imagine having the freedom to give up your books, backpacks and classes to just ride off into the sunset. In Kit Steinkellner’s newest play “Quixotic,” knighthood becomes a possibility.
“Quixotic,” playing at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica from Oct. 30 to Nov. 22, tells the story of Arthur Quick, an insurance broker who is determined to escape his mundane, cubicle existence. He does so in the only way that anyone in this day and age can: by role-playing. Except in this case, he actually believes that he is a knight.
The play, written and directed by two UCLA students, is a modern retelling of Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.” The original story tells of a man in 16th-century Spain, Alonso Quixano, who also tries to escape normal life by using his imagination.
Kit Steinkellner, the writer and a second-year screenwriting student in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, believes that the subject matter of “Don Quixote” is still relevant today.
“I really liked the idea of translating that story to now, about someone who seems to be crazy but really, what’s so crazy about wanting your life to be better and more beautiful than it is?” she said.
Steinkellner has been writing plays since high school and upon coming to UCLA, has also expanded her repertoire to include screenplays and television scripts. However, to her, playwriting allows for a more creative and communal experience.
“It’s a really intimate form, there’s something about everybody in the room being live ““ the actors on stage, the people in the booth, the audience,” she said. “It’s a very community form of entertainment and expression.”
Steinkellner graduated from UCLA a year early and was immediately accepted into the graduate school. One of the people she has met during her graduate studies was fellow student Amanda Glaze, a UCLA alumna of 2008 and the director of “Quixotic.”
Their collaboration dates back to 2006.
“I had a play, I admired her a lot as a director, I asked her if she wanted to do it, she said yes … and we’ve just been working together since,” she said.
“I really just love working with her. She’s amazingly insightful and intelligent. There’s a lot of good back-and-forth.”
Glaze has been working in theater since she was acting at the age of 5. It was not until she came to UCLA that she moved behind the scenes and started directing plays.
“Most of the designers and a lot of the actors that I’m working with now are people that I’ve met and worked with at UCLA. … These are people that have constantly inspired all through my time at UCLA,” she said.
“Quixotic” marks the third collaboration between Steinkellner and Glaze. This past spring, the two worked together on “House Full of Letters,” which won the National Student Playwriting Award in the American College Theater Festival and was subsequently performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
It was after the completion of “House Full of Letters” that Steinkellner came to Glaze with the idea for “Quixotic.” Glaze had a long-standing love for the story of “Don Quixote” and was immediately taken with Steinkellner’s idea to modernize it.
“I thought it was a perfect setting,” Glaze said. “You have all these people in the office … They’re too afraid to entertain hopes and dreams and the idea of possibility. So what (Arthur Quick) does is basically gives them inspiration.”
The modern setting of “Quixotic” also happens to be one that is incredibly familiar to many Americans today: an economic recession, the results of which has led to downsizing, potential destitution and ““ most of all ““ fear.
“I think this play can be played in any time and place and it would still make sense, but I think especially right now, because of the economic crisis, it is pertinent and relevant,” Steinkellner said.
The issues plaguing the characters within “Quixotic” are ones that Glaze especially relates to, being a college graduate facing an uncertain job market.
“It’s very easy to … simply give up on what you know you want to do and what you know you can achieve,” she said. “And I think this play is especially important in saying “˜No, don’t let that fear completely control you.'”