Sophie Fisher
There’s something wonderfully brutal about the acting profession.
You can spend years training, learn your lines, perfect an audition, walk confidently into a room and give everything you’ve got.
Then somebody you’ve known for approximately four minutes gets to decide whether you’re right for the job.
Welcome to An Ode To The Casting Director.
Written and performed by screen actress Sophie Fisher, this autobiographical solo show follows a gawky but determined actor attempting to navigate her way through the film industry one audition at a time.
Following a five-star, sell-out Edinburgh debut in 2025, which saw the production win a Fringe Theatre Award, Sophie returns with a show exploring auditions, rejection, questionable people within the industry, relationships and the determination required to keep going when another door closes in your face.
And there are quite a few doors.
Walking into the venue, one of the first things that caught my attention was the scenery.
There was a chaise longue.
A proper one.
I’m not entirely sure where they’ve lugged that from or, more importantly, who has the pleasure of moving it around Edinburgh, but my immediate thought was obvious.
The casting couch.
A place where dreams can potentially be made or broken in seconds.
Visually, it works.
But one of my favourite creative decisions in the production was the use of a screen and live camera.
At various points we see Sophie’s face projected onto the screen, effectively placing her in front of the camera for an on-screen test.
It’s a clever theatrical device because it serves two purposes.
Within the story, it fits perfectly into the world of screen acting and auditions. But for us as an audience, it also gives us an incredibly close view of Sophie’s facial expressions and reactions.
And those reactions matter.
A raised eyebrow, an uncomfortable expression or that fleeting moment where confidence disappears can say an enormous amount without requiring another line of dialogue.
It’s almost as though we’re simultaneously watching the actor on stage and through the eyes of the casting director.
Sophie delivers a performance worthy of an award.
There is humour, self-deprecation, naivety and confidence, sometimes appearing within moments of each other.
Most importantly, I became invested in her.
The show explores what it actually takes to pursue an acting career beyond the glamorous version we might imagine from the outside.
There are the auditions.
There are the rejections.
There are agents.
There are relationships.
And there are those wonderful family conversations where acting isn’t necessarily regarded as a “normal” career.
You can almost hear someone suggesting that perhaps you should get yourself a proper job.
An Ode To The Casting Director understands that pursuing a creative career can mean repeatedly having to justify why you’re doing it, not just to an industry constantly assessing you but sometimes to the people around you as well.
Then there’s the audition process itself.
You’re potentially being judged on everything from your acting ability to whether you happen to match somebody else’s idea of what a character should look or sound like.
You can be talented and still not get the job.
You can deliver a brilliant audition and still not get the job.
You can presumably also play the drums.
Or perhaps not.
You’ll understand.
What Sophie does particularly well is find the humour within those experiences without losing the reality underneath them.
The self-deprecation helps enormously here.
She’s willing to make herself part of the joke, and that creates a relationship with the audience very quickly. We aren’t simply observing somebody’s acting career from a distance; we’re being invited along for the rather unpredictable ride.
The pacing is also very good.
Solo shows place an enormous responsibility on one performer. There isn’t another actor waiting in the wings to inject some energy if things begin to dip.
Sophie doesn’t have that problem.
She confidently carries the production and keeps the story moving, while the different theatrical elements provide enough variety to prevent the format becoming repetitive.
The subject itself also feels relatively unusual amongst the productions I’ve encountered at the Fringe.
There are plenty of shows about performers, naturally – we’re at the Edinburgh Fringe, you can barely move without bumping into one – but I haven’t come across another production exploring the casting and audition process in quite this way.
And by the end, I was completely invested in Sophie’s career.
I wanted her to succeed.
I wanted her to get the part.
I wanted somebody to recognise what she could do.
And, perhaps most urgently of all, I wanted her to get a better agent.
When a solo performer has managed to make an audience member care that much about what happens to their character, they’re doing something right.
An Ode To The Casting Director is cleverly written and exceptionally well performed throughout.
It has heart, but importantly it also has realism.
There’s entertainment and plenty of humour, but underneath it is a story about somebody attempting to make a career in an industry where rejection is almost built into the job description.
That combination gives the production something beyond the laughs.
This is another production that I hope has a life beyond the Edinburgh Fringe.
The concept is strong, the theatrical devices are clever and, at its centre, Sophie Fisher delivers a performance that holds the whole thing together beautifully.
Casting directors, take note.
Sophie Fisher delivers a performance worthy of an award
5 Stars- ★★★★★
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/an-ode-to-the-casting-director
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