A stage adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Sara Ogilvie’s best-selling children’s book The Detective Dog has set off on tour across the UK. The stories follow the story of the relationship between Peter and his very special dog. Featuring puppetry, song, and magical scent technology, the UK tour follows Nell’s ever-sniffing nose as she detects the culprit behind a book disappearance at her owner Peter’s school.
Adapted and produced by Tiny & Tall Productions, the show is directed by Peta Maurice and features creative captions and British Sign Language to make the show accessible to deaf children and their families. We caught up with Maurice to find out more about translating the stories for the stage.
Q&A with Peta Maurice
What can you tell us about The Detective Dog?
The Detective Dog is a book written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Sara Ogilvie. It’s about Nell, The Detective Dog who leads her owner, Peter and the other children on a magical adventure to track down the thief who stole all the books from school. The show stays true to the style of Sara Ogilvie’s illustrations, making it recognisable to anyone who knows the original story and is, most importantly, produced for deaf and hearing families alike.
How do you approach directing a show like this?
My main approach was to keep communicating with the many people working on different elements of the show to ensure cohesive storytelling! I knew that to make this production specifically for deaf and hearing children, we needed to tell the story in the most visual way possible. We wanted to use British Sign Language alongside the spoken word so that both forms of communication worked coherently together without being too overwhelming. In order to do this, I had to make the decision to remove some of Julia’s text describing action and replace it with physical storytelling and the puppeteering of our lovely Detective Dog. We also wanted to use dynamic captioning as both interactive background design and for captioning the words spoken aloud. It was important to me that all these elements, including the beautiful music, worked in harmony.
It was important to have our BSL Director, the fab Lynn Stewart-Taylor, work alongside myself and our deaf performer, Amy Murray, so that we could choose the right signs for our young audience and keep checking that the story was understandable to all! I was lucky enough to have three great performers who are naturally physical, and it was fun exploring the childlike energy and high stakes with them in the rehearsal room. It is also worth saying that the whole team, including our brilliant interpreters, have been not only integral to making the show happen, but also an absolute dream to work with.
Are there any particular challenges when staging family shows like this?
There were a lot of challenges with staging this show, many of which we thankfully answered in the R&D a couple of years ago. How do you caption a show for children who are at the early phonics stage of reading? How do we make the music and songs visual so that our deaf audiences get the same enjoyment out of those moments? If we have smells, music, captioning, BSL and spoken words, how do we make a show that doesn’t become a sensory overload?! Who holds the puppet and who has hands free for signing…? Even things like how to focus lights so that the screen remains clear and vibrant is an example of little challenges that pop up. However, we have overcome all these things and are now touring a production that is fun and brings the audience together, no matter how they communicate.
What has it been like touring the show and how have audiences been reacting?
The reaction to the show so far has been amazing. We’ve had parents commenting on how the use of mime enhanced the understanding of the story. We’ve had lovely remarks that suggest conversations have continued at home about the joyful differences between us all and people whose children have become very interested in learning some more BSL signs. We had a teacher of deaf children say that she would recommend this show to everyone, and parents of SEND children thanking us for making the story so accessible. We couldn’t have asked for better feedback from our audiences. The children also get to meet Nell afterwards in the foyer with two of the performers and that always goes down brilliantly… thanks to Jess Jones, our puppet-maker, Nell is just the most loveable doggy around!
