Quijote Meets the Qissa
in collaboration with
Date:
August 8, 2026
Format:
Workshop
Location:
Instituto Cervantes Nueva Delhi
Theme:
Multilinguality, Hispanic Theatre, Technology & Art, Education
What happens when the same thing appears differently to different people? Can two things be true at once?
Our workshop "Quijote Meets the Qissa" brought Don Quijote into conversation with the literary and philosophical traditions of Punjab.
This was the first public workshop offered as part of Baba Quijote Singh, an immersive multimedia experience being developed by Kaivalya Plays.
Led by Varoon P. Anand, the workshop explored Quijote’s famous windmill encounter, using improvisation and embodied exercises to unpack how a scene is built, and how the same object can hold radically different meanings depending on who is looking at it.
We also played with CROW (Character, Relationship, Objective and Where) as a tool for understanding scenes, and placed Don Quijote alongside Punjabi poetry and literature, including a deep dive into “Bulleya, Ki Jaana Main Kaun” by Bulleh Shah, asking what connects these traditions: questions of identity, existentialism, pride, honour, madness and the search for meaning.
Through movement, improvisation, discussion and play, we began asking the central question of Baba Quijote Singh: what happens when Quijote’s world is imagined through Punjab?
This is only the beginning. The ideas, stories and discoveries from this workshop will continue to shape the work as it develops towards its premiere in December.
