Curious Incidents: Pretend Play, Presence, and Performance Pedagogies in Encounters with Autism

Abstract

[The “Space” environment is located within the “pod,” a portable tent structure containing the interactive performance installations that are the settings for the workshop program. Outer Space features a launch pad where the lighting and sound board are housed.

This phrase is borrowed from Mark Haddon’s (2003) novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is narrated by a 15-year-old autistic boy who seeks to understand the death of a dog, and which has been adapted to the Broadway stage by the National Theatre. Haddon borrowed the phrase from Sherlock Holmes, who spoke it in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story “Silver Blaze.”

Appendices

Appendix

Funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, this three-year interdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of Drama and Psychology explored the potential of drama to address what is known as the “triad of impairments” in autism: language and communication, social interaction and emotional regulation, and social imagination (imaginative play, theory of mind, flexibility of thought). ¹³ The results indicated statistically significant improvements in key areas to include peer interaction, emotion recognition, and empathy. ¹⁴ The project was trialed in three schools, over 3 terms (1 term in each school). Participants (22 children aged 7–12 with a diagnosis of autism) were exposed to a weekly program of 45-minute drama workshops over a school term (ten weeks). The workshops took place in one of five scenic environments (space, forest, underwater, arctic, under the city) on a rotation basis with each environment being featured twice. The project recruited students across the autism spectrum (selected by teachers).

Notes

• 1. Stimming refers to acts of self-stimulation that are common in autism and involve repetitive movements one’s body or of objects, for example, tapping, rocking, licking, and flapping. Grandin (2011) describes them as follows: “These behaviors self-soothe a child and help him regain emotional balance. Unfortunately, if children are allowed to stim all day, no learning will take place because the child’s brain is shut off from the outside world. It is perfectly fine to give a child some time to stim but the rest of the day, a young two to five-year-old should be getting three to four hours a day of one-to-one contact with a good teacher to keep the child’s brain open to receiving information and learning” (n. p.).

• 2. This citation is taken from the Phoebe Caldwell foundation website, which contains further information on intensive interaction and the extensive resources she has developed for educators and careers. http://www.PhoebeCaldwell.com

• 3. Editor’s note: Autist is synonymous with the noun form of autistic. Usage of many terms in this field appears to follow personal preferences rather than established norms.

• 4. The intermediality of the project’s title is the focus of discussion in “Material Voices: Intermediality and Autism” (Trimingham and Shaughnessy 2015). I use the term media to encompass the range of interactive materials and technologies that we work with. The media do not stand between the child and their experience but are integral to that experience.

• 5. As the quote demonstrates, all of 12-year-old Naoki’s thoughts and expressions are ventriloquated through his editor, who may have taken liberties to produce such articulate observations.

• 6. The sequence is discussed in the present tense with reference to published extracts from the project’s documentation. These can be found at www.imaginingautism.org

• 7. See Trimingham (2016) for a detailed analysis of this sequence in her discussion of the project’s scenography, drawing upon theories of situated cognition and new materialism.

• 8. See Trimingham (2016) for discussion of the environments (particularly the Forest) in relation to the gestalt model of action and progress and with reference to dynamic systems theory.

• 9. See Shaughnessy (2016) for further discussion of the training program in the context of artistic citizenship.

• 10. This training is featured in the Imagining Autism DVD (2014) with particular reference to the aural exercise.

• 11. See Remington and Frith (2014).

• 12. For discussion of the relations between cognition and affect, see Shaughnessy (2013) and Ward and Stapleton (2011). For detailed analysis of Imagining Autism’s practice in terms of situated cognition, see Trimingham (2016).

• 13. For further information on Imagining Autism, see www.Imaginingautism.org. A film documentary arising from the project is featured in the Routledge Performance Archives series (http://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com/search/video/1554).

  Imagining Autism was based at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom (October 2011-March 2014). Investigators were Professor Nicola Shaughnessy (Drama), Dr. Melissa Trimingham (Drama), Dr. Julie Beadle-Brown (Tizard), and Dr. David Wilkinson (Psychology). Participating Schools were St Nicholas School Canterbury (Spring term 2012), Laleham Gap, Broadstairs (Summer Term 2012), and Helen Allison School, Meopham (Autumn Term 2012).

• 14. The project results were initially reported in The New Scientist (April, 2014). See https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25419-drama-helps-kids-with-autism-communicate-better