Progress

When I started work at the actors' agency, in 1993, we didn't have a computer. We had one electric typewriter. We had two telephone lines - one for the actors to ring in, and one for casting directors - and a fax, which we thought was very modern and exciting. The actors all had landlines but nobody had a mobile. One or two of them had answerphones on their landlines, but most did not.

Casting breakdowns came in once a week, on a Friday, by post, and we would spend most of Friday typing them up into a newsletter, which we then photocopied and sent out to all our actors.

After a few years some of the actors got pagers - I thought these were great because I could page an actor and he or she would ring me fairly soon afterwards. After a few more years they began to get mobiles, and now an actor without a mobile is unthinkable (mind you, some of them don't seem to think to switch them on).

And, gradually, email became of increasing importance and now an actor without email is generally one who likes to think of themselves as an actor but doesn't really want to do the job.

Now we have several computers in a network (thanks to my husband) and two printers. The number of casting breakdowns coming into the agency has multiplied by at least a factor of twenty: and as a consequence of this, the actors do get a lot more work.

And it's much quicker to submit actors for jobs by email than it is by post, of course.

So the transformation in just thirteen years has been amazing. The only downside is that many more casting breakdowns coming in means a lot more work for us in the office. I think our workload has at least trebled. Luckily we're fortunate in having some excellent people to help plough through the ever-lengthening inbox.