Its use as a means of spiritual practice, both pagan and Christian, endures to this day. The labyrinth design is as old as civilisation itself and appears independently in many cultures. There are no choices to be made in a labyrinth, with its circuitous design, but instead a single path to be followed, an experience to give yourself up to, and a chance to enter into a more meditative frame of mind. The maze is a puzzle to be solved, a series of rational choices, directions to be negotiated and dead ends to be recovered from. I discovered that a maze and a labyrinth represent almost opposite types of journey.

As the complexity of these questions and this journey developed, it felt as though we were creating a kind of labyrinth or maze that might stage a series of encounters with our autistic performers.Ĭalum Macritchie in The Reason I Jump. We first thought of a journey through a series of rooms, each exploring a question related to autistic experience in the same way that each chapter of Higashida’s book asks and answers a question. The idea of taking the audience on a physical journey, to reflect a journey of discovery, seemed appropriate for a book that has taught so much to so many. Creating a space for that diversity of voices felt important. Could a theatre show communicate this remarkable worldview at the same time as allowing an audience to meet others with autism and hear their stories? After all, the diversity of behaviour and experience of those on the autistic spectrum is one of the condition’s defining and often confusing characteristics.

The book allows us to hear directly from its author and spend precious time getting to know how his mind works. If we were to say anything as interesting about autism as the book, we had to involve those with firsthand experience – parents of autistic children being the worst kind of “experts”, as my autistic friends like to remind me. Photograph: Pete DibdinĪn obvious starting point was to involve people with autism in creating the show: to make it their story as well as Higashida’s. ‘The theatre can be a difficult place for people with autism’ … The Reason I Jump.

The reason i jump by naoki higashida