The Traveling Serialized Adventures of Kid Quixote

On February 21, 2020, the Department of Performing Arts in collaboration with the Georgetown Humanities Initiative hosted the Kid Quixotes, 15 Spanish-speaking immigrants ages 6 to 17 who, since the fall of 2016, have been translating, adapting, and performing the novel Don Quixote as a bilingual, musical theater piece. Based in New York City and led by Stephen Haff, they reimagine the adventures of an old man in Spain in the late 1500s as a story of Spanish-speaking immigrant children living in Brooklyn today, inspired by their own lives. They negotiate every choice in translation, dialogue, lyrics and musical notes until they reach consensus.

The group travels in the US presenting their work in private homes of the rich and poor, college classrooms, including Columbia, NYU, Hunter College, Yale, Drexel, Johns Hopkins, and Vassar, and government offices, including the consulates of Mexico and Ecuador and New York City Hall. The message of these voyages, for the actors and for audiences, is that the kids belong in all neighborhoods and in the worlds of higher education and civic power.