CMU School of Drama


Monday, March 02, 2015

Autistic fans' appreciation of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"

CBS News: The hit of the season on Broadway is an explosion of sights and sounds that may make you see the world differently. It's called "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," about a 15-year-old autistic boy named Christopher Boone, played by 25-year-old Alex Sharp.

"People are very unpredictable to him," he told Pauley. "They pull faces that he doesn't understand. He can't read subtext, doesn't understand metaphors. He gets over-stimulated by things."

" It must be exhausting," Pauley said.

1 comment:

Kennedy McMann said...

This was a beautiful article. How inspiring it must be for Alex Sharp to meet autistic fans that he is representing in his acting work and to have them feel so strongly about the show. I'd imagine one of the most delicate things to take on as an actor would be any sort of mental illness with which one is unfamiliar; even more so, to do it on the Broadway stage. Sharp and the entire Curious Incident team must feel an enormous amount of responsibility to accurately, respectfully and honestly represent a very underrepresented group in our culture. The human mind and how it is received in society is a fascinating beast to explore, and to do that with such success in a public way gives great headway for further tackling issues of intolerance in regards to mental illness.