COMMON CASTING WEEK--Harvard's theatrical equivalent of fraternity rush--ends today, and with it the fortunes of the 44 student productions scheduled for the spring are all-but-determined. Now that casts are set, producers, directors and actors are beginning their toilsome work in preparation for the semester's drama calendar. Here's a rundown of what we can expect.

This term, theatrical activity may set an all-time Harvard record: the number of shows auditioning this week is the highest every. Undoubtedly, a few productions will be forced to fold due to a lack of actors and technical crews, but there are also several shows that have already held auditions, independent of Common Casting.

A better sense of the numbers should be available by next Tuesday, when all the major cast decisions will have been made. Moreover, shows often crop up in the course of the season--witness last December's "cubist comedy," Nurse Jane Goes To Hawaii.

As always, competition was fierce for Mainstage and Experimental production sports at the Loeb Drama Center: 29 projects vied for eight Ex stagings, and eight vied for the two Mainstage openings. The Houses, which offer less desirable production spaces, will take the spillover; most will be offering at least two shows.

We've got the usual Harvard staples to look forward to: Shepard, Stoppard, Shakespeare and Sullivan (with Gilbert). Also ahead of us though are Cibula, Smith, Davenport and Yang--four undergraduate playwrights getting their scripts produced. These particular plays are difficult to classify, ranging from Sweet Sins, a drama about domestic violence to A Nite-Lite, which the Common Casting pamphlet describes only as, "Urban. Absurd. Harsh. Ludicrous. Surprising. Possible."

OTHERWISE WE'VE GOT the usual batch of tragedies, comedies, musicals and thrillers. Under Harvard's drama calendar, the spring's four major productions include two Loeb Mainstage dramas sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club and two musicals: the annual Hasty Pudding show and the twice-a-year Gilbert & Sullivan Players offering.

The Mainstage will present Blood Wedding by the Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, as well as Moliere's The School for Wives. G&S gives us The Gondoliers at the Aggasiz Theater, while the 139th annual Pudding show, Bye, Bye Verdi opens at the Hasty Pudding Theater.

Beyond the high-profile productions are a number of other shows worth following. Among these are such varied offerings as Gilgamesh, billed as the "world's oldest epic," Chickencoop Chinaman, described as the first Asian-American production at Harvard and Dreams in Amber, a "music/theater dreamplay." And like last year's Wuthering Heights, there will be another staging of an honors thesis project.

Perhaps most surprising of all is that the first production will be presented in just three weeks.

Until then, there is plenty else to divert mind and, with the Currier House Dance Marathon, body. Last year's hugely successful Cultural Rhythms celebration returns to Sanders Theatre on Valentine's Day. The American Repertory Theatre has four productions, including works director by the Soviet director Yuri Lyubimov and by the Italian satirist Dario Fo.

Cinematic prospects are far less rosy. The Orson Welles Theater has yet to be resurrected from the ashes of last spring's fire. Central Square's Off the Wall Cinema is being converted into a homeless shelter. And the Harvard Square Theatre is no longer the Harvard Square Theatre.

Now dubbed the "USA Nickelodeon at Harvard Square," it comes complete with interminable previews and the annoying Sack cinema theme that precedes each feature. Worse, this change means the end of the beloved Superfilms Festival tradition. No more half-price noontime double feature classics.

THERE ARE SOME bright spots, however. The Brattle Theatre reopened last week after a two month absence, and the new management plans to offer an eclectic repetoir of classic, foreign and independent films, as well as live performance. The opening night celebration the 1952 Joan Crawford thriller Sudden Fear was followed by films and performances by such local musical acts as Treat Her Right and Roger Miller. Future programming includes such themes as film noir, women directors and the Japanese New Wave.

Continuing tonight is the 7th Black Independent Filmmakers Film Festival, a five film collection that includes a 1983 film by Spike Lee--the director of She's Gotta Have It --called Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

A more extensive festival begins tonight at the Harvard Film Archive. Running through March 8, the retrospective "A Salute to the Soviet Republics" will offer rarely-shown movies made in the Ukraine, Byelorussia and other constituent republics of the Soviet Union.

Finally, the House film societies that have managed to survive the proliferation of video cassette recorders in the dormitories will offer their own programs. If the semester follows past patterns, expect art-film oriented schedules from Dudley and Dunster Houses, action and popular movies from Quincy and Winthrop and randomness from Adams.