Daily Inspiration Quote by Trevor Nunn

Directing is one of the few jobs where doubt isn’t just a private feeling; it’s a contagious event. Trevor Nunn’s line pinpoints the uncomfortable math of leadership in the arts: you’re hired not only to have taste, but to project certainty strongly enough that dozens (or hundreds) of people will spend time, money, and ego following your choices. A director’s “self-confidence” isn’t optional bravado, it’s the operating system. Without it, rehearsals turn into committee meetings, actors hedge their risks, designers start pitching safer versions of the same idea, and the production quietly loses voltage.

Nunn also exposes the moral hazard baked into that role. The director must occupy a paradoxical posture: decisive enough to cut through noise, porous enough to be surprised. “Dangerously close to arrogance” is a warning about how easily confidence hardens into control. Once a director starts confusing conviction with infallibility, collaboration becomes extraction: other people’s contributions are tolerated only as fuel for the director’s vision. The work may still look “strong,” but it often gets smaller, less humane, less alive.

Context matters here. Nunn’s career spans large-scale theatre institutions where authority is structurally concentrated and the stakes are public: opening nights, critics, budgets, legacies. In that ecosystem, confidence becomes a kind of currency. The quote isn’t a celebration of ego; it’s a clear-eyed admission that the job requires a performative certainty - and that the line between inspiring leadership and self-mythology is thin, constantly needing discipline.