A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

At the end of last term, our Year 12 and Year 13 Performing Arts students performed in our very own play version of ‘The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time’. This was to showcase their skills for assessment of Units 2 (Year 12) and 19 (Year 13) in the BTEC Level 3 Performing Arts course.

We invited along students in the GCSE Drama class, as well as some Key Stage 3 students to watch and give feedback, which our Sixth Form students can also use in their self-evaluation work. We are very grateful to these students, who all acted as perfectly engaged audience members.

The original novel published in 2003, was an outright hit, winning numerous awards internationally and was translated into 36 languages. Haddon’s novel was adapted by Simon Stephens and was first presented at the National Theatre, London, in a production directed by Marianne Elliott in 2012.

Told in a first-person narrative by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy. Haddon once said “The Curious Incident is not a book about Asperger’s…if anything it’s a novel about difference, about being an outsider, about seeing the world in a surprising and revealing way. The book is not specifically about any specific disorder”.

The students performed really well together and worked as an effective ensemble, using many of the Frantic Assembly practitioner techniques, such as Physical Theatre. The central character, Christopher (played by Tia Pilgrim in Year 13), has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, also a developmental disorder. Young people with Asperger’s Syndrome can have a difficult time relating to others socially and their behaviour and thinking patterns can be rigid and repetitive.

In many sections of the play, we see what it is like for Christopher and how he sees the world. He also tends to think of what his support teacher Siobhan would say in certain situations (played by Bianca Ardelean in Year 13). This shows how much of an impact his teacher has made on him, which is really heart-warming and is very true for a lot of our students and teachers at Hatch End.

Well done to the students, who have now successfully completed these Units and for the first time as a combined class.

Mrs Burke, Head of Performing Arts Faculty