Nicholas Quirke was reminded of the promise he had made to himself to  not Direct and act on the same production again and was wondering why he had allowed himself to break this cardinal rule he had imposed some 20 years ago. Passionate about both it was alarming to rediscover how much when he was directing he disliked himself as an actor; needy, demanding, worrying about how he looked what he sounded like what the other actors were doing in relation to himself and when he was acting how much he disliked himself as a director. frustrated by sound, movement, pace, demanding actors. Each role pulled him in different directions and the focus he needed for both was dispersed between the two. He was in full director role for the tech rehearsal and full actor role for the dress rehearsal. His excitement and whimsy at dressing up, making himself an unutterably feasible echo of a Ching Dynasty Emperor was at odds with person who needed to be making decisions about lighting states and the music that needed to be used and placating his colleagues who were all getting irritated and tired by the split personality. Nicholas was aware that the joke circulating that he would be stabbed in the back one by one by his fellow cast members was a thinly veiled truth. The act though of being creative and his whole world being consumed by staging a production was still exciting and the praise that followed each performance was still food for the soul,