Entry for 2nd April, 2008

I am currently trying to finalise the cast for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This is a bigger problem than normal, because it's got a cast of about fifteen.
Now, if you were trying to put together a group of fifteen labourers to build a block of flats, then that would be relatively easy. Equally, if you needed fifteen guys to turn up to play rugby on a Saturday, that's be fine. A few phone calls; everyone checks their diaries and Bob's your uncle.
With actors it is different. As their heads are full of marshmallows and marsh gas, they are incapable of returning phone calls. Some like you to pursue them like young virgins first stepping out for the London Season - you need to wine them, dine them, and tell them how good they look in their new velvet cloak and floppy hat. Others don't have diaries. Instead, they retain information about appointments using an array of conch shells lined up on their window sills in a variety of intricate patterns.
Trying to line up fifteen actors for a show is a bit like being Rory the Sheepdog, trying to steer fifteen headstrong and very independent sheep into a pen the size of a small theatre in East Kilbride. Except sheep don't generally wear black polo necks and tell "hilarious" anecdotes about the time their trousers fell down during the graveyard scene in Hamlet.