Daily Inspiration Quote by Trevor Nunn

Direction, in Trevor Nunn's framing, is a hybrid job that refuses to stay in its lane. He pushes back against the lazy idea of the director as either a backstage traffic cop or a pure “vision” merchant. “Performing instincts” is his tell: the director isn’t outside the drama, clinically arranging it, but inside it, reading breath, tempo, and vulnerability the way actors do. The best direction, he implies, is an embodied intelligence.

Then he tightens the screw with “but so is analysis,” a small word doing big work. Nunn is guarding against the romantic myth that theatre is made by charisma and taste alone. Analysis is the discipline that keeps impulse from turning into indulgence: why a pause lands, why a motivation rings false, why a scene drags even when the acting is “good.” It’s a call for directors to earn their authority, not just perform it.

The final clause, “having a sense of literature,” situates his worldview in a tradition: the director as interpreter, not auteur bulldozing text into concept. Coming from a director synonymous with Shakespeare and large-scale musical theatre, the context is clear. Nunn’s career lives at the intersection of craft and canon, where language has weight and structure isn’t optional. The subtext is almost polemical: if you can’t hear the music of a line, track a theme, or respect how a playwright thinks, you’re not directing - you’re decorating.

It’s also a quiet job description for leadership: feel like a performer, think like a critic, read like a writer.