JAFP 7 (1) pp.

113120 Intellect Limited 2014

Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

Volume 7 Number 1
2014 Intellect Ltd Interview. English language. doi: 10.1386/jafp.7.1.113_7

Interview

Tom Ue
University College London

Adapting The Curious

Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time: A conversation
with Simon Stephens

Abstract Keywords
The following interview was completed by telephone on 10 September 2012. It Simon Stephens
focuses on Simon Stephens adaptation of Mark Haddons novel The Curious Mark Haddon
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The award-winning book tells the theatre
story of fifteen-year-old Christopher, who tries to solve the mystery of his next- adaptation
door neighbours dogs murder. This conversation gives an account of Stephens bestseller
reading of Haddons work; his understanding and realization, onstage, of Sherlock Holmes
Christopher, who suffers Asperger Syndrome; his changes to the novels ending;
and the staging of the play in the intimate setting of the Cottesloe at the National
Theatre in London. The critically and commercially acclaimed production trans-
ferred to the Apollo Theatre in the West End and ran until December 2013,
when part of the theatres roof collapsed. The play will move to the Gielgud
Theatre in June 2014.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Congratulations on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time! What
attracted you initially to Mark Haddons novel and inspired you to adapt it?

Well, I read the novel for the first time in 2005 when I was writing a play called
Motortown and I had an instinctive sense that at the heart of Motortown there
will be a relationship between a boy and his brother and the brother was going
to be autistic. So just as a general research process to investigate the phenomena
of autism, I read Marks novel. And I think, probably like a lot of people, when
I first read it, what really arrested me were the extraordinary compassion and
clarity with which he had written Christophers voice. This was a character with
a palpable and extraordinary heart and written with a real sense of truthfulness
and detail and I found that massively engaging. I was kind of fascinated by how
we really experience the people in the novel through Christophers perspec-
tive. And I found them in some way elusive but was fascinated by that elision
rather than frustrated by it. And then, in 2006, I had a residency at the National
Theatre and Mark had a twelve-week attachment there and we met one another
during his attachment. And (we) got on. We got a huge amount in common: we
are both men of roughly the same age; we are both fathers; we both share a love
of music; and we just kind of hung out. We are mates. We chatted a lot about all
kinds of things. And then about a year or so after that, he e-mailed me to ask me
if I would consider adapting it for the stage. He had been approached by several
groups of people over the course of the four-and-a-half years between writing
the novel and him asking me to adapt it. He wasnt very attracted by them but
(he) knew at some point that he will lose control over the stage adaptation, so,
because he was a friend and he had been very generous about my work in the
past, he said he wanted me to have a try at it before he turns to anybody else. So,
it was something that was extraordinarily daunting and extraordinary generous.
Clearly, you approach that novel with a sense that it is effectively the nations
favourite novel and that was slightly frightening although, you know, I never
adapted a novel for the stage before. I think the older I get, the more I will
do things that I had not done before rather than repeat myself. So I was really
drawn to his offer. I said that I would do it as long as I didnt take a commission
for it. As long as I reserve within it the right to fail.

Did Mark Haddon give you any suggestions for adapting the play?

No, he was exemplary really in his generosity. He said, look, I trust you, do
whatever you want to do with it. Just have a go at it, and be fearless, and dont
feel daunted by the success of the book or by the existence of the book. Just do
whatever you want to do and be as radical as you want to be. And yet at the
same time whenever I was stuck at something, hed be very open about talk-
ing about it and talking about his relationship with it.

What, in your view, distinctly separates the play from the novel?

The most clashing and obvious thing is that the novel is told entirely through
Christophers perspective and Mark never describes Christopher. He never
says how Christopher looks, never gives any physical description whatsoever
of Christopher in the whole novel. And theatre is necessarily a medium in
three dimensions. So the most obvious thing is that we see Christopher, we
see his corporality. He has a physical form. Not only does he have a physical

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form, but I think an even more profound difference is actually the people he
is surrounded with have physical forms. Surrounding and experiencing, for
example, Ed or Judy or Siobhan or any of the other characters that we see
through Christophers mind, his rather extraordinary mind we see them
ourselves in a position where we have to interpret the behaviour and reac-
tions between those characters ourselves. And I think if I was to choose one
thing that would be the thing. That the theatre is in three dimensions and the
novel is in pages entirely subjective. We need to filter the subjective through
the objective form.

Christopher is still the writer of the book and also the director of the play. Does that
make him, in many ways, similar to the narrator of Haddons novel?
Its a very interesting question. I guess the similarity is the possibility of the
authorial in the making of theatre. I think that it cuts to the quick of the funda-
mental differences between making theatre as a writer or any kind of authorial
figure and making a novel. Novelists work alone; they may be surrounded by
editors, they might have trusted friends, trusted readers, but fundamentally
they work alone. In the making of any kind of theatre, the heart of it is collabo-
ration. So necessarily, Christopher, if you do take the sense that he is directing
the play we see three moments when he corrects the production, I think
he is absolutely part of the collaboration. That collaboration is made explicit
by the character Siobhan who says that she will help him with it, but also the
actors are collaborators as well. Whereas, in the novel, its absolutely singular,
his voice is absolutely singular, hes a singular distillation of Marks singular
voice. Its very difficult to tell through the staging of the play what are the
decisions made by myself, what are the decisions made by Marianne (Elliott),
the plays director, what are the decisions made by the individual actors or
by Paule Constable, the lighting designer, Bunny Christie, the designer, Scott
(Graham) and Steven (Foggett) for Frantic Assembly, and Ian Dickinson, the
sound designer. You know, there isnt a singular authorial voice in the experi-
ence of reading the play in the way that when you read Marks book, you are
in the very assured and rather brilliant hands of Mark Haddon.

On a more personal note, do you find that a writer has more or less control when it
comes to writing a play?

I have never written a novel so I dont know. All I can really say is that one of
the things that I cherish about making theatre is that I am not alone, that I am
part of a collaboration.

Like the novel, the play makes porous the relationship between the narrating and the
experiencing Christophers. What led you to retain this structure and to place the two
characters continuously and consistently in dialogue?
The first answer to that, off the top of my head, is because it works and, if
something works, theres no reason to fix it. I think one of the joys of read-
ing the novel is you are put in the rather beautiful position of imagination, of
imagining the reality of Christopher. Because Christopher is not very good
as a character. Because he is not very good at delineating or accepting indi-
viduality, one is put into a position where one has to interpret and thats what
we love about it. I think what we do when we read the novel is you recog-
nize yourself within Christopher. Mark withholds so much information about

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Tom Ue

Christopher that you are put into a position where you find yourself recog-
nizing yourself. All of us have moments when we wish we could behave like
Christopher: the complicated mess of negotiating between individual expe-
rience becomes overwhelming and we wish we didnt have to, and that we
can just be in the moment. I think that the process of having Siobhan read
the book and describe Christopher doing things at the same time as trying to
wear the avatar creates perhaps a similar gap. In the play, what we search for
is a gap between things that Christopher does and the things that Christopher
realizes that he does and the dramatic irony of the novel and hopefully the
dramatic irony of the play exist in that gap. So having, in Siobhan, a narrator
who is more socially imaginative than the character, so Siobhan can, in read-
ing the novel back to him and to us, understand things about Christophers
experience that Christopher doesnt understand himself. I think that puts us
in that position where we recognize in ourselves the gap between what we
do and what we imagine ourselves doing. I think thats where we recognize
ourselves in Christophers humanity in our own humanity.

Christopher is such a rich and demanding character! He is wonderfully clever,

brutally honest, at times cheeky, and genuinely very human. Tell us about your
research for this character.
I did no research for him at all. I just imagined him entirely from Marks book.

Did you have any actors and/or stage characters in mind as you were constructing
Christopher?
No, I honestly dont think that I did. Marianne suggested Luke Treadaway to
me quite quickly on, quite early on in the process, and he seemed to fit very
happily. But in the process of writing, I dont remember having specific actors
in mind, no.

Ironically, Christopher sees stories as lies, and theatre dishonest. As he puts it in the
play, I dont like acting because it is pretending that something is real when it is not
really real at all so it is like a kind of lie (Stephens 2012: 53). Does Christophers
inability to lie make him even more vulnerable in light of the storys many flawed
adult characters?
I mean it gives him a different vulnerability. I think a vulnerability of Ed and
Judy, for example, is born out of that dishonesty. As soon as you lie to some-
body, you become vulnerable because you have to live in hope that the lie
is never uncovered. Christopher never really has that. Interestingly, there are
moments in the play when he does lie. He says that he doesnt always do what
he is told. When he sees the first letter, for example, and Ed actually confronts
him and asks, What are you doing? (Stephens 2012: 40), Christopher doesnt
completely tell the truth of what hes actually doing. He says that, Im reading
a letter (2012: 41), which is absolutely true but its a guarded truth. So he is
able to protect himself in some sense there.
Its interesting that I seem to be writing quite a lot at the moment, not just
in the plays I adapt like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time but in
my own original material as well, about how you can be kind to people by lying
to them. I think that generally people lie to protect other people. I think the
irony of that is that its actually rarely protective; in the end, its rarely protec-
tive, either of the people being lied to or of ourselves. Sometimes its not easy

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to negotiate the mess of social interaction without depending on dishonesty.

I think that Christophers difficulty comes in negotiating the mess of social
interaction because he doesnt have the capacity to lie, but I dont know if he is
more or less vulnerable. I think that he is just as vulnerable.

Are you optimistic about Christophers relationship with his parents by the storys end?

Well its very interesting because I normally have a definite answer to that kind
of question, which is nothing happens to the characters after the story ends.
The characters dont exist. The characters are just symbols. Effects that the
audiences have experienced. And means for the audience investigating them-
selves. As soon as the play ends, the characters end. You know? But weirdly,
having said that, and believing that quite passionately, there was one moment
after the weekend of the first run of previews when I just thought, with an
absurd and ridiculous and nave clarity, to myself in a way that I never think
about my own plays, I just thought Ed and Judy are going to get back together.
Clearly, Ed and Judy are going to get back together. Clearly, they shouldnt
have separated in the first place. I was left with a remarkable and frankly
unsettling optimism. But, having said that, theres a more serious question,
which is what I talked about yesterday to somebody, who asked me about a
change, about what happens to a change in perspective from the novel. The
novel ends with Christopher declaring with a real level of confidence that he
can do anything

And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and

because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found
my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do
anything.
(Haddon 2012: 268)

But you put this into questio, by having Christopher ask, in variations, three times:
Does that mean I can do anything? (Stephens 2012: 102)
Exactly. Exactly. Thats a real intervention. That came up out of a conversa-
tion with Mark because, when I first read the novel, I read it thinking I dont
believe that Christopher can do anything. The novel ends with I can do
this because I went to London on my own, because I solved the mystery of
Wellington, and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and
that means I can do anything. Thats his point of view. But from the posi-
tion of the reader, someone older than Christopher, regardless of the nature
of his medical condition, anybody older than Christopher would read that and
think that you will come across moments in your life when you realize that
you cant do anything. And actually Christophers condition means that those
moments are, if anything, more likely rather than less likely.
I talked to Mark about this and he said that he never found the ending of
the novel, he never intended the ending of the novel, to be entirely optimistic,
and he was slightly taken aback when people read the novel and thought that
Christopher can do anything, that he can do anything. A very good friend
of mine, a trusted collaborator and significant director, went and saw the play
and he wrote to me and said that he was keening for Siobhan to say to him
Yes, you can do anything! But it would have been fundamentally dishonest of
her as a teacher to say that because he cant. Just because he cant do anything

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doesnt mean that his future is one of fear or pessimism or both. Because none
of us can do anything and life isnt about the capacity to do anything. Its
quite the opposite of that. Life is about the capacity to negotiate our inabilities
rather than to engage with our abilities and tries on our abilities. I wanted to
create an ending to the play which demanded the audience to engage with
that question, which was in keeping with Marks intended ending for his
novel. So thats why I left it as an unanswered question.
I am optimistic about Christopher because I think hes a good person and
actually think that in the end he is surrounded by two or three very very good
people. I think Ed is heroic, and I think Judy is flawed but has the capacity to
real heroism. I think Ed and Judy learn a lot in the journey of the play, and
I think Siobhan is a brilliant brilliant protector and loving teacher and will
look after him. And with those three people around him, I think Christopher
has the capacity to live a life that is defined more by love than it is by hate
or by fear. And that makes me profoundly optimistic, but I dont think that
he can go on and do anything. I wouldnt be surprised if he did end up an
Oxford don in Quantum Physics but I dont think that necessary means that
he can do anything.

Do you see Christopher as having matured throughout the play?

I think that the biggest moment of maturity is one that a lot of people might
miss, which is a moment when he is in conversation with his mother Judy
and talking about the death, the murder, of Wellington, and he asked if killing
Wellington was a small crime, and she says, yeah, it was. And I think there is a
moment there when he starts to understand the complicated nature of what it
means to be human and to live in a human society. I think he has the capacity
to be sanguine about that. There is a moment of maturity, yeah.

While Haddons book uses an appendix in which Christopher solves a math problem,
the play ends with a postscript with Christopher doing so with the use of everything
in the theatre including VL000 arc lights, a smoke machine, light-emitting diodes,
UBL control speakers, an overhead projector and a deputy stage manager who
will operate these (2012: 103). What led you to retain and to hone in on this scene
with staging effects?
Again, because I thought it was good (Chuckle). When I read the novel, I
read it and thought it was fucking brilliant. What it does, what the coda does,
what the appendix does, and the coda in the play is it offers an unmediated
moment of engaging with the extraordinary nature of Christophers mathe-
matical imagination. And I think the novel and the play teases us with that
insight and gives us little glimpses of that insight. But I wanted, like Mark
does in the novel, to show us an unmediated celebration of the brilliance of
Christophers mathematical mind.

Unfortunately, when I was at the Cottesloe, many audience members had left
after the curtain call and missed Christopher and his math problem. Was this on
purpose?
That was always my intention! I really love it when that happens. Because it
reminds us of the live-ness of the thing. I think thats great. And it was really
good in the first few previews, where actually, because the nature of rehearsing
it meant that the time delay was longer. The first few times he did it, he did it

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for about 40 people, and I think all those 40 people left thinking that they had
a little gift that was unique to them. Every time any of us go to the theatre, we
do have a little gift which is unique to us because the performance is unique
to us, the theatre is also unique. Nobody is seating on our seat and looking at
that production from exactly the same perspective as we are, and the people
sitting on the previous side or the next side are seeing a different perform-
ance. So every theatrical performance, unlike probably any other art form, is
completely unique. And I love the fact that people leave because it creates the
uniqueness in the coda as well.

Did you have the Cottesloe Theatre in mind as you were writing the play?
No. I didnt really have any theatre in mind. Maybe the Cottesloe, but certainly
not in that consideration. If anything, I was kind of wondering about the
Olivier.

Thank-you for your time, for this truly moving experience, and for the gift of
Christopher!

References
Haddon, Mark (2012), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Oxford:
David Ficking Books.
Stephens, Simon (2012), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,
London: Methuen Drama.

Suggested citation
Ue, T. (2014), Adapting The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:
A conversation with Simon Stephens, Journal of Adaptation in Film &
Performance 7: 1, pp.113120, doi:10.1386/jafp.7.1.113_7

Contributor details
Simon Stephens began his theatrical career in the literary department of
the Royal Court Theatre, where he ran its Young Writers Programme. His
plays for theatre include Bluebird (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1998,
directed by Gordon Anderson); Herons (Royal Court Theatre, 2001); Port
(Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2002); One Minute (Crucible Theatre,
Sheffield, 2003 and Bush Theatre, London, 2004); Christmas (Bush Theatre,
2004); Country Music (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 2004); On the Shore of the
Wide World (Royal Exchange Theatre and National Theatre, London, 2005);
Motortown (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2006); Pornography (Deutsches
Schauspielhaus, Hanover, 2007; Edinburgh Festival/Birmingham Rep, 2008
and Tricycle Theatre, London, 2009); Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008);
Sea Wall (Bush Theatre, 2008/Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2009); Heaven
(Traverse Theatre, 2009); Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith, London, and Royal
Exchange Theatre, 2009); The Trial of Ubu (Essen Schauspielhaus/Toneelgroep
Amsterdam, 2010); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky (co-written with David
Eldridge and Robert Holman; Lyric Hammersmith, London, 2010); Marine
Parade (co-written with Mark Eitzel; Brighton International Festival, 2010);
T5 (Traverse Theatre, 2010); and Wastwater (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs,
2011). His radio plays include Five Letters Home to Elizabeth (BBC Radio 4,

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Tom Ue

2001) and Digging (BBC Radio 4, 2003). His screenwriting includes an adap-
tation of Motortown for Film4 (2009); the two-part serial Dive (with Dominic
Savage) for Granada/BBC (2009); and a short film adaptation of Pornography
for Channel 4s Coming Up series (2009). Awards include the Pearson Award
for Best New Play, 2001, for Port; Olivier Award for Best New Play for On the
Shore of the Wide World, 2005; and for Motortown German critics in Theater
Heutes annual poll voted him Best Foreign Playwright, 2007.
Tom Ue is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Doctoral Fellow and Canadian Centennial Scholar in the Department of English
Language and Literature at University College London, where he teaches and
researches Shakespeares influence on the writing of Henry James, George
Gissing, and Oscar Wilde. Ue is editor of a World Film Locations: Cities of the
Imagination collection on Toronto (Intellect Books, 2014) to coincide with the
citys 180th anniversary. He is currently beginning a monograph project on
legal theory and the British novel in the nineteenth century.
Contact: Department of English Language and Literature, University College
London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
E-mail: ue_tom@hotmail.com

Tom Ue has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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