Mark Haddon, the author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, talks about Simon Stephens’ stage adaptation of his best-selling novel which is currently on tour.

I was absolutely convinced that my novel was un-filmable and un-stageable. I had grown so tired of novels which were clearly written with a view to selling the film rights that I judged my own writing by its own un-adaptability. Curious Incident is so locked into, not just one person’s view of the world, but one person’s very insulated and profoundly mistaken view on the world. There are things Christopher doesn’t see and there are things he misinterprets, so the reader has to read into his reports of the world, and into things that are not there. Stage is radically third person. You can infer what people are thinking but you can only do so from what they say and what they do. So, I imagined a kind of spectrum with Curious Incident at one end and writeable plays at the other. Simon’s genius was to recognise that I was completely and utterly wrong.

Theatre is always about a place. It’s a place in the world where a group of people have gathered at one time and had an experience together. If you’ve missed that evening you’ve missed something that’ll never happen again. That is the complete opposite of writing, which has no place whatsoever. You sit at home in a darkened quiet room whilst other normal people go out to work. You don’t know who you’re writing for but you know that if it’s successful this book will hopefully be read somewhere else on the planet by someone you’ve never met. If it’s really successful you’ll be long dead and someone will be reading it in a different language. It’s fantastic that it’s in America but it’s everywhere at the same time. It’s lovely that the book has been everywhere in this numinous way and that it’s finally putting its feet down in those places.

My nine year old son didn’t just enjoy it, he was fascinated by it. He’s a nine year old boy, he likes fighting with sticks and playing football – it’s really hard to glue him down to a seat. Through the whole thing he was completely riveted. Everywhere I go I bump into to unexpexpected people who’ve seen the show. The other day somebody came to fix the drainpipes and he told me he’d just seen the show and loved it. I really hope the same thing applies as it does to books in that a success isn’t everyone going away having had the same experience and agreeing about it. It’s everyone having a good, interesting or moving or edifying experience and then going away and realising that the person next to them has had a good experience but it’s been different.

It’s such an ensemble piece with so many of the cast on stage at the same time that you pick lots of parts that don’t exclude everyone else. I’m going to go for Astro Boy and not explain – you can work it out when you see the show.

Photo © Alex Rumford