CURIOUS INCIDENT Selfie from Kaley B.

Good theatre recreates reality. An audience watches a play expecting to have their emotions enthralled. The set may be wildly fantastic, the choreography may be astonishingly intricate, and the story may be full of twists and turns, yet a play must ring true in order to effect human sensibilities. As I sat down in the Gielgud Theatre before The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I glanced at the harsh, glowing grid of a stage and felt convinced that the story about to be portrayed would be completely alien to my day of walking through London in the heat and noise of big city crowds. I leaned near to my neighbor and whispered, “I’m really more in the mood for a musical. Something comforting, I mean.” I wanted to forget the day and be whisked into a peaceful, familiar place. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time did not lead me to a place of calm and ease, but watching the way that Christopher sought truth in a world full of confusion aided my understanding of my own world.

The play begins by inviting the audience into the mind of an boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who loves computers and mathematical equations and desires his world to make sense in the same way machines do. Although relatively few real props were used, the digitized technicality of the stage allowed for a stunning visual representation of a world where glowing squares magically created the illusion of buildings, the floor became a drawing pad for mapping ideas, and real people only intruded on a world carefully crafted in Christopher’s mind. The bright lights and dynamic sound effects were both mesmerizing and shocking, and they made me realize that I was an outsider to world being portrayed on stage. I reside in a world of euphemisms and metaphors and courtesies. Christopher lives in the same world but had such an intense desire for logic and precision that his eyes found a digitized brightness and precision in life that I had never before seen. For Christopher, there is a solution to every problem. Despite the clear-cut nature of Christopher’s expectations, he constantly experienced bewilderment and pain as he interacted with adults who did not act in the mathematical way that he expects.

Although Christopher has created a vision of life that operates independently of human interaction, he constantly relies on the adults around him to create his dreams whether he realizes it or not. The play opens with Christopher’s words, but coming from his teacher’s mouth. Although the story is his, Christopher would not have allowed me into his stunning imagination without the push and motivation of Siobhan’s calm voice. Christopher goes about his daily business of opening the fridge to get his strawberry milkshake or playing Tetris while lying on his bed only with help of the other adult actors who helped him create the furniture and appliances of his house with their own bodies. When Christopher describes his dreams of becoming an astronaut, the other actors join him in dance-like movements to create a scene in which he floats effortlessly through the air but only because of the strength of those below him. Although Christopher prefers to be alone and cannot stand to have people touch him, it is only through the physical presence and touch of others that he is able to experience the life he imagines. In fact, Christopher and his parents use the physical pressing of their fingers together to confirm their love and trust for one another. Christopher’s reliance on the others in his life is made heartbreakingly apparent in the scenes where he loses control of his body through sickness or seizures and needs his parents to change his clothes and help him to bed. In such moments of bare vulnerability, Christopher cannot rely on his own mental ability and is forced to overcome his aversion to touch in order to regain his life’s order again. He has constantly avoided physical interaction because the adults in his life did not follow a formula. Their deceptions and attempts to cover reality confused Christopher, and yet presence of his parents is also the most consoling solution in the moments when he is not strong enough to make sense of his surroundings any longer.

Even though I don’t look at the world and see a machine with flashing lights, precisely organized lines, and floating prime numbers, I saw elements of Christopher’s world that reflected my own. Christopher’s experience of the London tube station as an overwhelming place of terror and danger reflected my own first time trekking through the tube earlier that day. His illness and his inability to fix his problems made me remember earlier moments of helplessness as I felt unable to respond to situations beyond my control. The adults who held Christopher up and gave him the strength to reach his dreams reminded me of the self-less leadership ability of the adults who I look up to in my own life. Watching Christopher attempt to struggle through the things he feared and yet finding joy in watching the stars, cuddling with a puppy, and acing his A-levels reminded me that stressful circumstances may be my moments of greatest potential for growth. Any interaction with other people entails a collision between their world and mine. I experienced this as I hesitantly entered Christopher’s world that was fraught with perplexing problems. Yet the crash of my interactions let sparks fly that illuminate beauty in things like prime numbers and the color red that I had bypassed before. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time did not allow me to escape my own world, but catching a glimpse into Christopher’s life through brilliant theatrical effects and persuasive character portrayals allowed me to perceive personal situations through different eyes.