When casting a musical like, for example, Les Mis, which has some very difficult songs, what do you think should come first - acting or singing ability? I was having this discussion with a friend recently because we are both going to be in an amateur version of Les Mis later this year, and we were discussing how it should be cast. As we have a small group of people (well, about 1300) to choose from, we obviously dont have that many amazing acting-singers or singing-actors and my stance was a mediocre singer could be cast as a principle and still be able to pull it off if he was a good actor. He disagreed and said that some songs are very technically demanding and if you dont have the right singers cast then an essential part is lost. What do you think? Which is more important?

Ed