Today's writing center director is surely an anomaly, a curious intruder into an academic drama. Like a character in Pirandello's famous play, the laboratory specialist is unsure of his role, insecure about his lines. His persona' s mask is Janus-faced, looking both to the aims of the professor and the student. In this respect, the writing center director is an intermediator, thrust into the agon between protagonist and antagonist only after the initial bloody scenes have been played. As a participant in this academic drama, I find it useful to give literary tags to the characters, borrowing from Shakespeare's best-known play.