Kicked into the long weekend

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you never quite manage to catch up with yourself?

Week one of auditioning is now behind us, and Jake and I are officially delighted. Delighted and knackered. From the initial 176 applicants (and a mere 670 emails later), we have been entertained and impressed exactly eighteen times, blown-out without notice five times, and been left with two permanent grins.

Grins made even more painful by a visit to a prospective location on Friday late-afternoon, as we snuck into another local college just before the half-term break.

This is how we should have done it first time round – meet up with the head-teacher and the estates manager first, tell them exactly what we’re after, and see what they think. Once the boss is on-board everything becomes easier and quicker. This particular college has a pedigree of performing arts, and they seem incredibly relaxed about welcoming the undead onto their premises this summer. The meeting itself lasted only about ten minutes, after which Jake and I were invited to tour the college grounds at our leisure and check out where we’d want to film.

And schools without kids in are creepy places. Add a bit of post-apocalyptic debris and turn off all the lights, and there’s a horror film to be had here.

This place was genuinely fabulous. It had the same eccentric and mismatched architecture and bizarre elements that we loved so much in the last college, but probably more so. There is an awesome hall within which to house the zombie horde, labyrinthine corridors peppered with alcoves for key lighting, and a whole load of rooms with something unusual about them.

And the debilitating location angst takes a dip towards the green zone.

Next week starts off with more of the same, albeit it with a spare Monday stuck in there somewhere which my girlfriend called shotgun on before I could laden myself up with zombie-related activities. Round two of auditions kicks off on Tuesday morning, and we hope to have our cast nailed down by the end of the week.

So just before I get harangued away from the computer and encouraged to fritter away my quickly-evaporating free time, another enormous thanks to everybody that came down to audition for us, and to Philip and Scott from the Royal Oak for letting us bogart their basement all week. Charmed nervousness regarding the rumours of hauntings in the hollows proved to be unfounded, but then again we haven’t played the audition tapes back yet. Brave.