A Book as A Play

The book “The curious incident of the dog in the night time” is about an autistic boy named Christopher, who is a math genius. When he finds his neighbours dog dead stabbed with a garden fork he decides to do his own detective work to find the killer. When he finds out that it was his father he fears for his own life and leaves to live with his mother who had left him and his father and of whom his father told him she died. The play “The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime” is in many way different than the book. The author had to make some significant changes to turn the book into a play. The play “The curious incident of the dog in the night time”  is a lot shorter than the book as descriptive parts will be imagined on stage and were therefore cut out of the text. The play is partly read out loud by Christophers teacher Siobhan so that such descriptive parts wouldn’t be lost.

In the play there a some very descriptive parts about how Christopher sees the world. The book is written as a diary from Christopher. He sees the world very differently than other people would and describes it accordingly. In the play a lot of these descriptions were cut as it would have made the play to long and it is extremely hard to perform such parts. In the play there was plenty of room left for the reader's imagination, which was probably a thing that I enjoyed very much of the play.

The Author of the play “The curious incident of the dog in the night time” decided that some of the descriptions of Christopher were too significant to be cut. The play is about how Siobhan, Christopher's teacher and probably the only person that he truly trusts, reads the diary from Christopher. The action that takes place is being played out by the actors while some of Christopher's thoughts and  descriptions are read out by Siobhan. That allows that no detail is lost in the play but it still is, in my opinion at least, more entertaining than reading all the book’s long descriptions of Christopher’s complex thinking.

I enjoyed reading the play “The curious incident of the dog in the night time” more than I enjoyed reading the book. I found that the book had some parts that were in my opinion to long boring and dry descriptions of how Christopher sees the world. Even though it was interesting to read about, I found that it sometimes was just too long and the author got lost in description. I also found the play easier to read for the exact same reason. I enjoyed it more. A book that bores me tends to be a lot harder for me to read and even though the book didn’t exactly bore me, I liked the way they mixed up detail, description and action in the play much better than in the book.

When one wants to make a book into a play it is obvious that there are some necessary changes that need to be done. Especially cutting of detail and description which is shortened into stage directions. The way the book “The curious incident of the dog in the night time” is turned into a play is well done. It cuts just enough description to keep the play interesting without losing detail and the way Christopher's thoughts are included in the play, by having Siobhan read them out loud, is a perfect way to express them in the play.
Sources:
http://www.stageplays.com/images/the_curious_incident_of_the_dog_big.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AVVhtHugL.jpg