One of my favorite things about being a theater writer is when I get the opportunity to interview someone whose work I’ve admired, and that is the case with actor Brendan Looney. In 2019, I saw him as Sketch in the musical Hairspray and even in that relatively small part I noted his “extra fillip of quirk, prowess and just plain joy of performing” in my review of the production. Fast forward six years, and Looney is now taking on the massive and massively challenging lead role in San Francisco Playhouse’s production of the Tony and Olivier Award-winning play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, directed by Susi Damilano.

Written by Simon Stephens based on the novel of the same name by Mark Haddon, the play employs creative storytelling and staging to communicate the inner life a 15-year-old mathematics genius Christopher, who is autistic. Upon the discovery of the death of his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, Christopher launches an investigation which sends him on a roller coaster of a journey that ultimately upends his entire world. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time works simultaneously as a thriller and a character study, and is one of those rare critical successes that has also proved to be incredibly popular with audiences.

I spoke with Looney over the phone last week as he was eagerly anticipating the cast’s first rehearsal actually in the theater later that day. We talked about how important it is to him as an actor with autism to be given the opportunity to play an autistic character, the ways in which he and Christopher are not at all like each other, and how he found his path to becoming an actor, starting at the Deer Valley High School Academy of the Performing Arts. I found Looney to be a delightfully direct conversationalist, confident but not at all cocky in his ability to deliver the goods onstage. He is clearly an actor to watch. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Absolutely. My history with Curious Incident goes a bit back. When I was in high school, my theater teacher, Joyce Thrift, had a paperback copy of the version of the script from The National Theatre production. She hadn’t known at the time that I was autistic, but I think she saw that I really did have an interest and an attachment to Curious just from what I had heard about it and the video I’d seen of it. She lent me her copy, and I just felt so seen reading it and getting to experience Christopher for the first time. I’ve wanted to do that role ever since, and I’ve been biding my time waiting for that to happen.

It’s difficult to say where he falls on the spectrum because I don’t really love the use of, say, high-functioning or low-functioning. I think autism is autism, and everyone who has it, including me, experiences it in a different way. So there could be some places where someone with autism really struggles, but at the same time they excel somewhere else. It’s really just a case-by-case basis so I wouldn’t really like to say “Oh, Christopher is high-functioning.” Or “He’s low-functioning.” He just has autism.

One way is that he’s amazing at math. Like he loves math, he can list square roots up to the millions, he can list every prime number up to like 700,000 and something. I am terrible at math. Christopher does these math equations when he is figuring out how to find if a triangle is right-angled, and learning what he is actually talking about has been challenging – because once again, I’m actually not good at math! [laughs]

So that’s one thing, and then like I said with autism being a spectrum, everyone experiences it differently, and Christopher’s experience is not the exact same as mine. There are some areas where Christopher thrives and areas that I’m deficient in, and there are ways that I can cope with something in a certain way that Christopher absolutely can’t. So it’s been an interesting getting to know Christropher and why he reacts to things in a certain way but also knowing I don’t experience things the same way that he does.

One thing is that Christopher was diagnosed from a young age and he goes to a special needs school where he gets the tools and the coping mechanisms that he needs to be able to function. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, so for me I kind of had to find all of those things on my own. When he’s in a stressful situation he knows that he needs to take a second, collect himself, and then go on. And that’s something that I didn’t know I could do.

So there are certain times where he experiences a social situation or something that is very sensorially overwhelming and he will go and put himself into a ball, create kind of like a groaning sound, which is a way to make a white noise in your head to block out other stimulus, and that helps him to be able to get himself back to a neutral state. With me, if I was in that kind of situation I would just kind of completely mentally check out, because I didn’t realize that I could do that.

Another thing with these coping mechanisms is that when someone who is neurodivergent does that and someone who’s neurotypical sees that, they can think that that’s not appropriate for that social situation, and that it seems weird, it seems strange, it’s unusual, it’s off-putting. But it’s something that’s really necessary for us.

Yes, exactly.

I think it’s a matter of approach. I just try to be very present in the moment and the circumstances that Christopher is in. And if it just so happens that in that moment with what Christopher’s experiencing I end up getting that emotional reaction and, say, end up crying, then great. But I think that’s where the control comes in. I’m not planning for that to happen. I don’t try to force those moments; I’m just trying to live in the circumstances and be truthful in that moment. So if that truth is crying, then I’ll cry, but if it’s not coming to tears then I’ll experience whatever the alternative is in that moment.

Oh, gosh, the most fun part of Christopher is just how invested he is in his investigation of Wellington. There are so many moments where it feels like Christopher is going down a rabbit hole of figuring this out, of trying to find the truth. He’s very invested because he wants justice. There’s also something that is just so fun that he loves Sherlock Holmes novels and in a way he’s getting to be his own version of Sherlock Holmes. I find so much joy in that.

And also, he is a teenage boy. I’ve found many moments where Christopher can be a bit snarky, and it is so much fun to play with that. You know, there’s magnitudes of levels to Christopher, he’s not just this sweet little boy. He can be a smart aleck and mouth off.

I was born in Daly City and raised in Antioch, and that’s where I pretty much have lived most of my life. High school is when I started acting and dancing at the Deer Valley High School Academy of the Performing Arts. Before that I was terribly shy and really afraid of presenting myself around other people. It was through performing that I ended up kind of breaking out of my shell.

My earliest memory of seeing live theater is an unusual one because I only remember little brief bits of it. My cousin was doing Grease when she was in high school, and I only remember the beginning, where it’s the kind of like Greek chorus singing the alma mater. And then my cousin left the stage and I don’t remember anything else after that. I don’t think I could have been older than seven or eight, maybe even younger. I wish it was more interesting, but that’s my first memory.

It’s really just such a fascinating, you know, invention of humans, and something that’s been with us for so long - going on a stage, seeing someone acting out a story. It’s such a simple premise, but it feels so integral to us.

Yes. My high school was going through a sort of turbulent moment where we were cycling through different theater teachers every other year, and then Miss Thrift came in my last year of high school and was there for a long time after I graduated. It finally felt like, “Okay, we have something stable again, we have someone who knows what they’re doing, we’re in good hands.” I got to TA for her for a freshman class of incoming students and it was just such an interesting thing to be on the other side of an acting class and see so many students like me who were just getting their first exposure of the arts and starting to thrive in it and really connecting.

First, I went to Diablo Valley College because I wanted to spend some time at a community college before going to university, and it was in the time I was at DVC that I started doing musicals around the Bay Area. I worked with CCMT [Contra Costa Musical Theatre] and Woodminster, and then finally I worked with Bay Area Musicals where I did Crazy for You and Hairspray. I was really grateful when I was at DVC to not only get an education but also get my first exposure of doing non-educational productions.

After that, I went to Marymount Manhattan College and I feel that made me the actor I am. I had some really amazing professors, like I had a teacher who told me that when I was acting it seemed like I was watching myself. That really made something click with me of the problems that I get of being too self-aware. And that’s what influenced my choices of just trying to be the most present in the moment, be aware of everyone around me and be emotionally checked in with myself.

Other than the role of Christopher, what has been your favorite role to date?

Well… I would have to say Christopher. Sorry to just say the character I’m playing right now, but it really does feel different from anything else I’ve gotten to do. He is the character that I connect to the most as a person. He’s my first time as someone who is autistic and neurodivergent getting to portray that onstage. There are depictions of us in the media, but roles depicting autism aren’t often written with autistic actors in mind, so getting this opportunity is really, really important to me. It’s something that I cherish.

(All photos by Jessica Palopoli)

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time performs May 1 – June 21, 2025 at San Francisco Playhouse 450, Post Street. For tickets and more information, visit sfplayhouse.org or call the box office at 415-677-9596.

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