Spare a thought for actors this Christmas. While you are at it, spare a thought for theatre. Normal service has now resumed on Broadway, and the West End has notched up a record-breaking year in ticket sales. But in 2008 hard times are purportedly ahead. According to some, very hard indeed.

Why? Ask a casting director. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Jim Carnahan, one of New York’s finest. “I’ve been in this business 12 years and this is literally the worst time ever to try and cast a play.”

The spider lurking in theatre’s web is the American writers’ strike. On November 5, 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America laid down their pens, in a dispute with studios over DVD and online revenues. Production ground to a halt on a slew of movies such as Angels and Demons and State of Play. The TV shows Heroes, 24, The Office and Grey’s Anatomy all went dark.

And, according to Carnahan and Co, the strike is paralysing theatre. Joyce Nettles is currently casting Rupert Goold’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at the Almeida in North London. She is having “a seriously difficult time” doing so. Goold is one of the hottest directors in the land. Judas is a peach of a play. The Almeida itself is not to be sniffed at. Yet an awful lot of sniffing appears to be going on.

“Nobody can commit to 2008,” Nettles says. “The actors we’re looking at aren’t working but are under contract to American studios to resume shooting immediately the strike finishes. It’s not just ‘name’ names. Look at the casts of Lost, The Wire, Heroes. British talent is all over LA. So trying to get leads into next year’s theatre is very tricky. Terrible, in fact.”

Sonia Friedman, one of the most prolific producers in theatre, describes the situation as “a crisis.” She was told before November that actors couldn’t commit in case the strike happened. “Now we’re being told they can’t commit in case it carries on. Projects are falling over because we can’t find the leads.”

Partly this is because of money. Actors don’t want to accept poorly paid theatre work to make up for earnings lost during the strike. Or else they’re contractually unable to work until currently suspended projects are concluded. And then a slew of TV and film projects are expected to be rushed through by the studios when the strike is resolved: agents want their most promising clients to remain available for roles.

But wouldn’t agents rather take 10 per cent of a theatre salary than 10 per cent of nothing at all? “Gotcha, that’s what I’m holding out for,” says Bernard Tesley, one of New York’s top casting directors. “I tell you, it’s a hell of a Christmas for the acting fraternity. But what I’m hoping is, the minute the strike’s over, people who know there’s nothing on the LA table until fall will call up and say, ‘OK, I’m in’.”

Carnahan agrees. Next season’s Broadway staging of Les Liasons Dangereuses, with Laura Linney, gave him “a hernia. Nobody, nobody, nobody would commit.” So too for The Seagull, with Kristin Scott Thomas, due to open in the spring – trying to get an actor of suitable stature to replace Chiwetel Ejiofor, who co-starred in the original Royal Court production in London, is proving a challenge. The story is repeated with the stage version of Spike Lee’s Stalag 17. “Black male actors between 25 and 40? Nowhere.”

On the other hand, he concedes, “there is some joy in mudville [New Yorkese for theatre]. We got Jeff Goldblum for Speed-the-Plow at the Old Vic because he was sitting on his hands. So let’s see. It’s a waiting game.”

So the ghost of theatre future isn’t universally bleak. One of the West End’s busiest casting directors, David Grindrod, guffaws at the notion that he might be affected: “I wish. We work mostly in musicals. Denzel Washington’s not working but contractually unavailable? Oh well. Joseph will have to cope.”

Joseph will cope, Chekhov might not. “Everything and nothing’s on the cards,” Carnahan concludes. “It’s crazy. You just couldn’t write this stuff.”

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