Daily Inspiration Quote by Trevor Nunn

Authority on a rehearsal room floor is less about volume than about conviction, and Trevor Nunn is naming the brutal speed with which doubt becomes contagious. A director can speak in perfectly calibrated notes, but if the underlying belief in the production’s spine wobbles, actors feel it instantly. Not because actors are fragile, but because their job is built on risk: stepping into emotional exposure, making choices that can look foolish in daylight, trusting that someone outside the scene is steering.

Nunn’s “something to hold onto” is doing a lot of work. It’s the invisible contract of process: that criticism isn’t random, ego-driven, or reactive, but tethered to a coherent idea of the play. Actors can handle tough notes; they can’t handle arbitrary notes. When he says they “need to believe” the comment “is meant,” he’s talking about intention as a stabilizer. Notes aren’t just corrections; they’re signals about what the room values, what the story is, what kind of truth the production is chasing.

The subtext is a warning to directors who hide behind openness. If you present every decision as provisional, you don’t come off collaborative; you come off uncommitted. Collaboration only works when there’s a center of gravity. Nunn, a veteran of large institutions and high-stakes productions, is defending a kind of benevolent decisiveness: your certainty isn’t ego. It’s infrastructure.