Daily Inspiration Quote by Trevor Nunn

The line lands like a polite rebuke to the auteur fantasy: the director as lone genius issuing vision from on high. Trevor Nunn, forged in the rehearsal rooms of British theatre and the industrial-scale collaboration of West End and Broadway, is making a claim about power disguised as a claim about creativity. “30 imaginations” isn’t just a headcount; it’s a model of authorship. He’s arguing that the real asset in directing is not control, but orchestration.

The phrasing matters. He doesn’t say “30 people” or “30 opinions.” He says “imaginations,” elevating the costume supervisor, the understudy, the lighting designer, the stage manager into co-authors of meaning. That’s theatre logic: everything onstage is interpretation, and interpretation multiplies when the room is safe enough for disagreement. The alternative he sketches - “one imagination telling the other 29 what to do” - is managerial, even authoritarian. It’s the meeting where everyone becomes a pair of hands, not a mind.

Subtext: collaboration isn’t sentimental, it’s strategic. A production is too complex for single-point genius; it needs distributed problem-solving. The comment also protects against a common trap in directing: mistaking clarity for rigidity. Nunn’s best work has often been praised for emotional coherence and precision, but he frames that coherence as something you build with people, not impose on them.

In an era that still rewards “visionary” branding, Nunn quietly insists the strongest vision may be a room where vision is shared.