Daily Inspiration Quote by Trevor Nunn

A career map that looks suspiciously like a manifesto: Trevor Nunn frames his early years not as a climb up a prestige ladder, but as a deliberate zigzag between “popular” forms and the canon. The rhythm of the sentence matters. He starts with the modest “occasionally,” then names work that’s often treated as lighter fare - musicals, pantomime, plays with songs - before pivoting to “The next stop,” a phrase that sounds almost logistical, like switching trains. That’s the subtext: range isn’t a romantic ideal here, it’s a working method.

Dropping Shakespeare and Ibsen functions as cultural shorthand: two brands of seriousness, one mythic and expansive, one modern and psychologically exacting. But Nunn doesn’t end on the expected coronation of classics. He ends on risk: “a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.” The final clause is the real tell. It’s not just eclecticism; it’s a belief that the director’s job is to keep the ecosystem alive - to use the box-office muscle and craft discipline of big forms to bankroll, train for, and legitimize the unknown.

Contextually, this sits neatly inside postwar British theater, where institutional stages (and later, subsidized ones) were constantly negotiating between audience appetite and artistic stewardship. Nunn’s line quietly rejects the snobbery that separates entertainment from art. He treats song, spectacle, and high literature as adjacent tools - different instruments in the same orchestra - and positions taste not as a badge, but as a responsibility.