ROCHESTER — Rochester Memorial School teacher Karen DellaCioppa, who also runs the school’s drama club, adapted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Hound of the Baskervilles,” into a two act play for her students to perform May 3. DellaCioppa titled her two act Drama-comedy “Mystery at the Manor.

The teacher read many of Conan Doyle’s works over the summer. She chose Hound of the Baskervilles because “I felt that this was a story I could easily adapt for an elementary school audience.  It had the mystery, and it had action. It also had a dog, which appeals to most kids.  But the story does not have many characters, and most of them are male, so I had to make some changes,” she said. 

She also adapted the story in rewriting to make it more of a drama-comedy. “In my version, the previous owner died and left his fortune buried somewhere on his property,” DellaCioppa explained. “This allowed me the opportunity to add more characters, as well as humor, to Conan Doyle’s dramatic story.”  

Dialogue and characters both presented a challenge in adapting the famous tale. 

One “difficulty was figuring out what they should say so that they fit into the mystery. The other challenge came when casting the play.  There were 30 roles and 35 students who tried out. Not wanting to cut anybody, I had to write in five more characters, again making sure not to complicate the mystery,” DellaCioppa said.    

However, seeing what her actors did with the material was her favorite part. 

“The best part of this whole experience was watching the students make the characters their own,” the drama director said. “Their interpretation of how the characters spoke or acted helped make the play better than I had imagined.”

She gives credit to all of the tech crew, the set builders, rehearsal supervisors and others for making the play happen.