Sir Trevor Nunn Interview (page: 2 / 6) Theatrical Director	Print Interview

Do you think you were a gifted child?

Sir Trevor Nunn: I have absolutely no idea about the genetics of it. I so wanted to perform, and I grasped every opportunity. As a family we would go around to see an uncle of mine and there'd be some other relations there. I discovered that on one of his shelves there were seven or eight books. We didn't have books in our house.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There was a brown volume and I pulled it down and it was the works of William Shakespeare. And my response to it was, "I want to find a speech that I can read out to everybody." Not, "I want to take this book off into a corner and I want to discover about a whole play, and I want to read it privately to myself." And so, with a strange precocity, I would stand in the corner of the room and I would deliver Shakespeare's speeches, with no sense whatsoever of the context, or of the role that I was playing. I mean, I would gradually begin to put two and two together with these speeches, and begin to understand what must be going on in the play. I still have that volume, because my aunt gave it to me when I was going off to university. That's a very treasured possession. But, I just have to be grateful for whatever gift was handed on to me. In terms of performing, yes of course, I used to feel nerves. I used to feel adrenaline, but I also used to feel a huge magnetism. I really want to do this. I would be terribly disappointed if anything would get in the way of my being cast in something, or performances being canceled. It was a fix that I obviously needed.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Later on, when I was trying to justify having an academic education, and wanting to apply the performance gift, whatever it was -- then I did study. I did think very carefully about the role of the director. I read a great deal of director's memoirs. I read a book by Tyrone Guthrie that hugely influenced me, inspired me. And, I have done ever since because I really enjoy discovering how other people deal with the contradictions. The thing is, there is very little formal training for being a theatre director. There's a little bit more for being a movie director. There are film schools. Most theatre studies places don't actually accommodate directors or have a program for them. Certainly not in England they don't. In a way, I sympathize with that because there is something unteachable about it. Really, what you're doing is putting into professional play the way that you relate to other people, the way that you analyze and relate to a written text, the way that you would persuade anybody to anything. It's to do with listening. It's to do with humility and a sense of yourself.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

What do you consider your first big break?

Sir Trevor Nunn: The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone. I was incredibly lucky. I thought that I was going to a purely academic place, and I discovered the most thriving student drama situation in the world. I found myself there with contemporaries like Derek Jacobi, and Ian McKellen, and John Cleese, and Peter Cook and David Frost -- all kinds of people who went into the entertainment business. I felt very inspired by them, and was amazed when they told me that they enjoyed doing things with me. It's such a stimulating and thrilling thing to discover you are amongst your peers and you're being pushed and challenged. You don't necessarily have the limits that you thought you had.

After University, I applied to some twenty-odd professional theaters, and most of them replied with a sort of pro forma statement: "I read from your letter that you have no professional experience, so you must go and get some professional experience and then apply to us again." A vicious circle. Everyone is telling you to go get experience, but you can't get experience unless someone gives you the opportunity to do it professionally.

I was fantastically fortunate. When I was 13 years old, a professional theater company in my town needed a kid actor. I auditioned, and I got the part, so for just a few weeks I became a member of the company and I met some professional actors.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There was a young, juvenile romantic actor called Tony Stedham. And I used to talk to him in dressing rooms back stage, and tell him about all the things that I wanted to do when I grew up. And one of the theaters that I had applied to had a director called Anthony Richardson. And eventually, I got a note from this Anthony Richardson saying, "Maybe you could come over to this Midlands town, Coventry, and we could have a talk." I hitchhiked over there, and I waited around outside his office until several hours passed, and eventually he was free. And I went in through the door and Anthony Richardson was Tony Stedham. He'd changed his name. It was the guy that I'd used to -- when I was 13 -- have all of those dream talks with. He hadn't realized that either. It wasn't that he was preparing a surprise for me. Discovering that extraordinary bit of happenstance had occurred, he said, "I guess that settles it. I'm looking for an assistant, so I'd better stop interviewing people because this is such an extraordinary accident. I will appoint you."

Get the Flash Player to see this video. That theater where I first got a job at, just happened to be 15 miles away from the theatre that I had the biggest fantasy about of all, which was the theatre in Shakespeare's birthplace, which is also in the Midlands, Stratford-upon-Avon -- just 15 miles away was the place where it was all happening, as far as I was concerned. Peter Hall was just organizing for the first time, the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time. It never occurred to me that an extra bit of good fortune had happened to me. I just thought, "This is wonderful. I'm close enough to be able to go see what's happening at Stratford all the time." It never occurred to me that when I did something good at the theater that I was working at, the people in Stratford read about it, and they were only 15 miles away, and they came over and saw what was going on.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. After just two years in that first theater company, I was employed to be an Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Then, two years after that, I was asked to be the person, to be the Artistic Director. I was 27. I said no, as forcibly as I could, which was rather weakly, kind of shuddering and nervous and saying, "I don't think I'm up to this." Peter Hall said, "I'm sure you are." He was my absolute mentor. Fortunately, he's still a very dear and close friend who I see all the time. That push into 'this is something that you can do,' I found myself actually responsible for the whole thing which was even at that stage, it was the biggest theatre company in the world, at just about my 28th birthday. By the time I left, I retired 18 years later, it was probably the biggest theater company in the world by double. It was often called the best theater company in the world, the called the most famous theater company in the world. We had extraordinary worldwide successes.

The route from first going to college to that place didn't involve years of suffering, and deprivation. It didn't involve a great deal of rejection. I remind myself of that as often as I can, when I'm auditioning, when I'm interviewing, when I'm hearing other people's stories. First of all, you have to have the luck. Secondly, you have to be ready to use it when it happens. I can't just shrug and say developing an internationally famous theater company is just a preordained or lucky thing. Of course it takes a lot of application and determination. There were a huge amount of downs, as well as the ups, particularly struggling with financial crises. Once every two or three years, we were about to become extinct.

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