Amidst the beginning of the spring season also came the quick conclusion of school activities. As their final production of the year, the drama department bid their farewell by showcasing their take on “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” story from Thursday, April 26-May 1.

Senior Adam Mar took on the lead role by playing as Christopher Boone, who was described as socially different. Similar to Mar, Christopher has autism and sometimes struggles with expressing his emotions. Behind Mar, the ensemble was part of the cast and played their part to help further display Mar’s emotions, which helped to make this unlike anything Millard West’s Theater had presented before. The cast’s attention to detail paid off for the decorations and cast members helped add to the story. Various curtains were hung up to represent the different locations of the story, and star-like lights were strung up to represent the night Christopher discovered the crime. 

As the play began Christopher mysteriously found his neighbors dog murdered in a nearby yard and saught out to discover what had happened. Performing on stage has grown a great passion for Mar and pursued this after initially performing in the previous Unified Play as the lead. 

“In late winter we started,” Mar said. “We had to look through our lines and practice constantly.” 

The play began with Christopher’s scene discovering the dog’s death, who was impaled by a pitchfork, and thus the plot complicated and Christopher’s investigation began. He then ran a series of interviews to find his culprit, all while recording his notes in a notebook, like Mar showed on stage. Along his journey, the character developed with the story and discovered more about his family.

“In the story, Christopher has to figure out who killed this dog, and in the process as he discovers who killed him he is revealed to know more about his own life and his mother who he thought was dead,” director Brooke Phillips said. “By the end, Christopher then has to solve them, but I think Adam played the perfect role for who Christopher’s character was.” 

Additionally, another main character who received lots of attention during the production, was Ed Boone who was played by senior Nathan Bigler. Ed essentially became the antagonist of the play as he turned out to be the murderer. Christopher was completely devastated and immediately distanced himself and ran away to London in search of his once-proposed-dead mother. 

“Throughout the rehearsal on Wednesday during our preview I went through a scene and totally messed it up,” Bigler said. “I ended up messing up the order of scenes, which could have messed up our whole rehearsal, but I ended up stopping myself and turned to Adam and asked what the scene was and he ended up getting me back on track.” The play concluded with Christopher’s reunion with his mother, as well as his father’s attempt to mend their relationship. The cast closes the play with a final bow, for many of the crew had to say goodbye one last time, but this ending was more special because of those who helped make it happen.