AN ODE TO THE CASTING DIRECTING Will Come to Edinburgh Fringe

An Ode to the Casting Director will come to Edinburgh Fringe. Performances will run at  Assembly George Square Studios (Studio Four) George Square, EH8 9LH Wednesday 5th- Saturday 29th August 2026 (not 13th, 20th), 12:00.

Following a critically acclaimed, award nominated, sold out run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2025, An Ode to the Casting Director will return as a breakout solo show, heading back to Edinburgh Fringe 2026 with Assembly.

Written and performed by up-and-coming new voice Sophie Fisher (The Scotsman's Rising Stars of 2025), the show builds on its Fringe success with a lightly chaotic solo work charting the lived experience of pursuing an acting career. A hilarious and heartfelt show, it charts a journey through audition rooms and shifting expectations, exploring the strange rules and demands encountered along the way. Further developed after its 2025 run, it delves deeper in an exploration of expectation and self worth, asking what it takes to unlearn the belief that value must be earned through constant judgement and performance.

It follows a personal journey through auditions, relationships, family dynamics, and inherited expectations. Over time, it traces how external judgement becomes internal belief, shaping how we see ourselves. It becomes an excavation of identity and connection, where industry, intimacy, and family all blur into questions of worth and belonging.

Directed by award winning filmmaker Linda Ludwig (Man of the Hour (2018), BAFTA Best Short Film Longlist 2019; Under the Blue (2024), Sony Future Filmmaker (2025)), the show places audiences inside the audition room through a live feed camera system. Every gesture, silence, and reaction is captured in real time, drawing the audience directly into the moment and creating a cinematic theatre experience that feels immediate and immersive.

As the show has grown, it has resonated with a wider community of artists and performers, with a chorus of voices woven into the world, including Charlotte Anne Tilley, Maddy Banks, AJ Bentley, Arthur Boan, David Boan, Zoë Carey Williams, Marcus Houden, Vincent Rosec, Yuna Shin, Diana Toft, and Shekhar Varma.

Sophie Fisher comments, "The live feed element places the audience inside the audition space, not as observers but as the ones holding the gaze. It creates a strange intimacy where vulnerability is unavoidable. At its heart, the show is about learning to separate your sense of worth from being assessed, and finding connection in places that are not conditional."

Sold out in London at Seven Dials Playhouse, the production has rapidly established itself as one of the most talked about new works on the UK theatre scene as a sharp, funny, and emotionally charged interrogation of identity, worth, and the stories we inherit about ourselves.

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