Daily Inspiration Quote by Trevor Nunn

A good director walks into the room with a map, then has the nerve to throw it away. Trevor Nunn frames that paradox with disarming pragmatism: he “arrives” with strongly developed ideas, not because he’s autocratic, but because rehearsal time is expensive, human energy is finite, and theatre punishes vagueness. Preparation is his respect for the company. It’s also his way of staking a claim: there is a point of view here, a spine the production can test itself against.

Then he undercuts the auteur fantasy. The second sentence is a quiet manifesto against the brittle kind of vision that treats actors as delivery systems and rehearsal as execution. “Subject to change” is not indecision; it’s an operating principle. Nunn is describing authority that earns its keep by being permeable. The best idea in the room might come from an actor’s mistake, a designer’s constraint, a line reading that exposes a hidden joke or ache. If the concept can’t survive that contact, it was never a concept, just a posture.

The subtext is diplomatic but firm: he expects challenge. Rehearsal, in this view, is a controlled argument where the director brings rigor and the ensemble brings reality. Coming from Nunn - whose career bridges Shakespeare, mega-musicals, and prestige drama - the context matters. Different forms demand different kinds of control, but all of them collapse without collaboration. He’s selling a culture of work: prepared, opinionated, and unafraid to be revised by the room it’s trying to move.