North’s winter play of 2024, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” will be performed in St. Charles North’s Auditorium from Thursday-Saturday Feb. 1-3, with tickets costing $5 for students and $7 for adults. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is based on a book written by Simon Stephens of the same name, published on May 1, 2003.
“It’s about this boy named Christopher who is on a journey to find his way through life, doing daily tasks that are not so easy,” said Reagan Jorgenson, a sophomore member of the ensemble.
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is different from the plays North’s Theater Program usually performs, in that more tech-influenced ideas were implemented. A projector is used for the first time in North history to provide the different backgrounds for the play.
“We’re using projections because it really adds another element to the show visually, because we have a pretty minimal set,” said senior Logan Barnum, Projections Creator/Student Tech Director. “We wanted to put the audience into the show and know where they were without having to build all these places because this set has so many different locations in it and it gave us this technological aspect we were able to use throughout [the play] as well”.
According to Barnum, using the projector saves time and money for set building. Barnum also added that they created a lot of the slide scenes used for the projections to save the department money since projection scenes can cost up to $600 per slideshow.
From a technical standpoint, the tech crew’s job for this play is to add these new elements to make the audience feel more engaged with the story. The use of the projector provides well-timed audio and lighting to help the audience view things from the perspective of the main character, Christopher.
“The audience is supposed to feel overwhelmed along with Christopher, So it’s cool to see that represented in how we do lights and sound, trying to make the audience feel something,” said Cory O’Rourke, senior and Stage Manager.
This added tech gives the audience a new way to view this story that helps to better represent the perspective of a type of character not shown a lot in plays. Christopher is one of the first protagonists on the autism spectrum who will be represented in North’s Theater Program. Christopher will be portrayed by sophomore Lincoln Pixton.
“Christopher is the main character in The Curious Incident. He’s a really smart kid, but not the most socially aware kid. He’s on the spectrum, and he’s this math genius that doesn’t really understand people the way the neurotypical people do, but he’s still a bright and unintentionally funny character,” said Pixton.
A new projector is being used for more efficient sets. With one of the few dramatic performances North gives about a genius math boy who is on the spectrum. These are a few of the new changes the Theatre program is doing that will for sure make this play interesting, pushing people to buy tickets and see the show.
“I had a really fun time with it. It’s a plot that you won’t see that often, it’s a story that is not really that well told, and it’s very different than most shows you would see on the stage,” said senior Alex Kosson, who plays Christopher’s mom, Judy.
