Photo by Jake McNeill Simon Lanoue, Lydia Weverka and Carter Herky rehearse a scene in the Marshall High School production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” at Southwest Minnesota State University on Wednesday afternoon.

MARSHALL — The Marshall High School theater program’s spring production shows the world through the eyes of a 15-year-old autistic boy.

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” is being performed at 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday, at the Southwest Minnesota State University Fine Arts Theatre Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The play, adapted from a 2003 book by Mark Haddon, is about Christopher Boone who lives with his widowed father. It focuses on a chain of events stemming from the mystery surrounding the killing of his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, with a garden fork.

“I think for a lot of the play, we have Christopher, a boy who is living with autism, not only trying to make sense of the world at large but trying to make sense of the adult world,” said Dan Smith, the Tiger Theatre director. “Why do adults do some of the things that adults do? I think that… sense is heightened when you have somebody living with autism and trying to make sense of how adults are doing the things they do in his life that don’t make sense, but they still genuinely love him and genuinely want what’s best for him. In the process of doing so, some things that nobody expects happens.”

One of the things that’s interesting about the play is the way the scenes shift rapidly.

“So in the mind of an autistic person, the scenes shift really fast because they’re all things that he’s playing through his head,” Lydia Weverka, playing the role of Chris, said. 

“The play is told through the eyes of Christopher writing a book about the play being made. So it’s kind of like the Inception moment. It’s like a play inside of a play,” Linnea Williams, playing the role of Chris’ teacher, said.

The play has its humorous moments, but it brings about serious discussions and challenges its audience to think about how it sees the world.

“I think it’s so rarely seen that the story is being told through the eyes of a person with autism,” ensemble cast member Sophia Gaul said. “It’s a different experience than just seeing a play… it gives you empathy for people who aren’t neurotypical and don’t see the world as we do.”

While getting into the headspace of someone who thinks differently can be difficult, Smith praised his cast’s ability to play their roles.

“I think the most important thing is they’ve really grasped the story internally. We’ve talked throughout the process a lot about each scene,” Smith said. “When you have a show that’s made up of snapshots, of vignettes like that, what does every one of those moments mean?” 

“They’ve thought about how each of those moments has impacted their character in those moments and how we build a larger story about that. We’ve also talked a lot as a cast about when we were kids, and these guys are still kids… they’re students, they’re teenagers, they’re growing up, they’re maturing. But when we were kids and we looked at adults in our lives, how did we think of them and some of the things that they were doing? The way that Christopher looks up to the adults that are in his life as well, we’ve had those conversations.”