The other thing about auditions, from the perspective of a writer/director, is that running auditions is heaps of fun and therefore a total culture shock.

I’ve had deadline after deadline recently for writing various projects (the kids’ TV show, the comedy festival script etc) so I’ve been locked in a small room with a laptop, measuring my life in half hour slabs and cups of tea and seeing nobody with the exception of housemates, Rita and Stew.

So imagine the shock of going from that (I literally haven’t seen my other friends for months) to meeting seventy new and exciting people in a weekend, in intensive bursts, over thirteen hours of auditions.

You know what it does to you? It turns you into a machine. It’s just like when you play tetris for too long and you end up looking at buildings and thinking how they’d fit together. After auditions, I went to buy milk at the shops and thought the guy at the checkout counter did an excellent job of portraying himself and had very good diction.

By the way, if you did audition, thank you. You were all very professional and generous with your time and your performing, not to mention kind to us in our small sauna and it was a pleasure to see so many new faces. If you’re going to audition in the next week, yay for you - we’re past half way through. I’ll tell you one thing for sure: auditions are exhausting but they are SO much more fun than sitting in a room by yourself writing.

But then, sometimes, so is tax. And data entry. And parking fines.