Acting and the Task of Directing

Acting should be left to the professionals. This is a principle that I have held for years and have thus been able to avoid the humiliation that would inevitably befall me if I ever took up such a career. Unfortunately, this last week I was subjected to the task of performing act 4, scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet in front of our class. This experience has further instilled in me that I hate acting and that I would also never be cut out to be a director. For instance, there is too much that a director has to simultaneously think about not only in the minute details of the scene itself but the gestures, actions, and voice of each individual actor as well. Consequently, directors are forced to achieve a level of superior multi-tasking that is practically impossible to reach. In my small performance, as an insignificant example of my failings, I had no idea how to give a character with few lines (Juliet's nurse) a life of her own. From observing my fellow classmates I noticed that many were able to discover their characters to be soothing, arrogant, timid, angry, desperate, etc, and emphasized these qualities in the character's actions and voice. Hopefully I will improve in my ability of discerning a character's true personality from the text and presenting that to an audience. Time will only tell if I will be able to achieve this goal when the spotlight falls on our class' production.