Actors sought for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Written by Mark Haddon and Simon Stephens, it will be directed by Harry Atkinson who is offering a workshop on January 15 and auditions on January 22. Anyone interested can get in contact with Harry via e-mail beforehand on [email protected], but equally you can just turn up on the day of the auditions and if you are right for the part, you will get the part. As Harry says, everything is up for grabs at the moment.

Christopher, 15 years old, stands beside Mrs Shears’ dead dog. It has been speared with a garden fork, it is seven minutes after midnight, and Christopher is under suspicion. He records each fact in the book he is writing to solve the mystery of who murdered Wellington. He has an extraordinary brain and is exceptional at maths, but he is ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched, and he distrusts strangers. But Christopher’s detective work, forbidden by his father, takes him on a frightening journey that turns his world upside-down…

“The play was my suggestion,” says Harry. “I put forward several plays and the committee chose this one. I think it's a really interesting play to do. It's not a conventional play with a box set and furniture and people coming on and saying their lines. It's very much physical theatre. It's very much played on an open stage and we're taking a multimedia approach. All the actors remain on the stage all the time, making and dispersing the set as they go along. Each character is assigned a box and when they're not actually involved, they're sitting on the box.

“I saw the play in London several years ago and I was just knocked out by it because of the very different approach that it takes. The whole thing is seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old autistic boy, and an autistic person does not experience reality in the same way that a non-autistic person does. He sees confusion and he sees chaos and he finds it very difficult to make sense of things and of what he sees. The whole thing is seen through his eyes. It is not really an exploration of autism as such. It's far more about the way that Christopher experiences reality, and it is also very much about family and family ties. It's about family connections and family bonds. Christopher believes that his mother is dead which of course she isn't. She's run off with the neighbour. And what kicks it all off is that his father has killed the neighbour’s dog. Christopher finds the dog and wants to find out who has killed the dog. The whole thing is built on the very old idea of a quest which goes right the way back to the Greek myths. And in fact he has two. He wants to find out who killed the dog and then his new quest is that he wants to find his mother.”

Harry is now looking for people to come forward to audition: “In some areas I'm quite strong with what I've got but surprisingly it's the younger women that have not so far come forward but there is still time. At this stage everything is still open. It's all to play for.”

But he stresses that for the ensemble parts, given the physical theatre nature of it all, a reasonable level of fitness will be needed.