Theatre / News
Master puppeteer Dik Downey on Don Quixote, Nordland and getting old
What do an old Spanish classic, puppets and reflections on ageing all have in common?
The answer, as it happens, is Dik Downey, a puppeteer and visual artist based in Bristol whose new one-man show Don Quixote (is a very big book) is coming to the Wardrobe Theatre in October.
Dik explains that he decided to adapt Miguel Cervantes’ monumental 1605 work because he had “a blind panic” when having to come up with a new show for a Norwegian theatre he has worked with frequently.
is needed now More than ever
Dik Downey’s office; eat your heart out Tiny Desk Concert – photo: Dik Downey
Dik admits that it was only after the theatre accepted his pitch that he realised he was going to have to read the famous novel.
The choice of the book, which Dik says was “always a part of my psyche”, came to him during a van trip from Barcelona to Lerida, another city in Catalonia, where, looking out the window, he was struck with the thought that this was “Don Quixote country”.
Rather than get bogged down with dusty tomes on Cervantes interpretations, Dik describes how Emma Williams, one of the play’s co-creators and a long-time artistic partner, did a “deep dive” into the book, watching a Yale professor’s lectures on the history and importance of the famous Spanish text.
The play isn’t quite a faithful telling, however. It interweaves Quixote’s lofty adventures with Dik’s own story and theatrical history – what he calls “epic failures” that are “quixotic in their ridiculousness”.
That ridiculousness has continued. “The first thing I did when I knew I was going to do the show was buy a suit of armour,” Dik explains. The 17kg suit was purchased unworn on eBay from “some young guy in Bristol”.
There’s a magic to the story of how the play was made. While some of the set design was done in Bristol, most of the work happened during five weeks spent in Stamsund, a small fishing village in Nordland in the north of Norway.
The village, despite only having a population of just over 1000 people, has three theatres, including Figurteateret, where Dik was based, which gets government funding to make plays, as long as there is some form of puppetry involved.
He describes it as an “amazing place”, which apart from the theatres only has a gym and supermarket, meaning there’s nothing to do except concentrate on the show, though the creative work was sometimes interrupted with quick swims in the North Sea, accompanied by three hardy elderly Norwegian women.
Dik argues that puppetry is “becoming really on-trend again” in the UK, with shows like War Horse and My Neighbour Totoro having boosted the prestige of the artform.
Dik is also clear that it’s a significant and distinct medium, with endless artistic possibilities: “You can do anything with it. Mess with scale and time. It’s not limited to just actors.”
This fits particularly well with the eclectic spirit of the Wardrobe Theatre in Old Market, a venue Dik praises for being willing to take risks and be bold.
He thinks that audiences in their 20s and 30s “just want to see something different” but bigger theatres are risk averse due to the artworld’s slim margins.
With so much time invested in this experimentation, Dik isn’t afraid to admit that he can’t do much else: “I have this belief that I have no transferable skills… I’ve only ever been a performer or a maker.”
While this may be great for his many fans, it’s perhaps not such a piece of financial wizardry; something Dik is more than aware of.
Don Quixote is, in the book, eventually jolted out of his daydreams and brought to see reality for what it is. But for Dik thoughts about retirement are kept on the back-burner. “What I do is quite deluded,” he adds.
‘Don Quixote (is a very big book)’ is at the Wardrobe Theatre from October 7-18. For tickets and more information, visit www.thewardrobetheatre.com/shows/don-quixote-is-a-very-big-book
Main photo: Dik Downey
This article first appeared in the Bristol24/7 September/October 2025 magazine
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
