To an outsider, a rehearsal room can look completely chaotic. Conversations overlap, ideas change direction, scenes are rewritten, and nobody seems entirely certain where things are heading. Yet behind that apparent disorder is remarkable discipline. Every rehearsal is moving towards a clear destination. In this conversation, Julia Middleton sits down with theatre directors Jennifer Tarver and Vivi Tellas to uncover what this creative process reveals about leading people through uncertainty, collaboration and discovery.
Their conversation explores why the strongest ideas rarely belong to one person, how trust can achieve more than control, and why sometimes the most powerful thing a person leading can say is, “Let’s try it.”
From Being the Boss to Leading the Process
One of the most striking moments in the conversation comes when Jennifer reflects on the kind of directors she admired early in her career. They were brilliant, charismatic and completely certain. Before rehearsals had even begun, they had already imagined every movement on stage. Some built miniature models of the set, placing tiny figures exactly where each actor would stand, long before those actors had entered the rehearsal room.
It was an impressive display of vision, but over time Jennifer began to question what was being lost.
If every decision had already been made, what space remained for discovery? If the director already possessed every answer, what role did everyone else’s experience play?
As Julia listens, she recognises that Jennifer is describing something much larger than theatre. She observes that there is a difference between being the boss and leading a creative process. A boss directs people towards an outcome that already exists in their own mind. A person leading creates the conditions for something to emerge that none of the individuals could have created alone.
Jennifer captures this beautifully when she explains that her role is no longer to impose a vision but to “harness the accumulated life experience of everybody in the room.”
That sentence quietly reframes the entire conversation.
Too often, we imagine expertise as something that sits with the person at the front. Jennifer suggests that expertise is already distributed throughout the room. The challenge is not demonstrating your own knowledge; it is noticing and drawing out everyone else’s.
This is perhaps why rehearsals look so different from traditional meetings. They are not built around convincing people that one idea is correct. They are built around making enough space for ideas to collide, evolve and strengthen one another.
It is a slower process. It is certainly less predictable. Yet it also acknowledges something profoundly human: every person enters the room carrying experiences that nobody else possesses. When those experiences are welcomed rather than managed, creativity becomes collective rather than individual.
Jennifer Tarver: “It’s much more interesting to harness the accumulated life experience of everybody in the room.”
The more Jennifer speaks, the more difficult it becomes to separate theatre from leading itself. Whether we are working with actors, engineers, teachers or entrepreneurs, the same question remains.
Are we trying to prove that we have the best ideas?
Or are we creating an environment where the best ideas can be found?
The Weight of Having All the Answers
Jennifer’s story is complemented by Vivi Tellas, whose own journey began with a very different struggle.
Like many women stepping into positions of responsibility, Vivi believed there was a particular way a director was supposed to behave. She needed to sound certain. She needed to project confidence. She needed to appear in control.
Looking back, she laughs at the version of herself who thought directing meant becoming louder than everyone else.
“I thought I had to become a man,” she reflects, describing the subtle pressure to imitate the styles of leadership she had seen celebrated around her. Authority, she assumed, belonged to the loudest voice and the strongest opinion.
It took years before she began asking a different question.
Not, “How should a director behave?”
But, “How can I direct from who I really am?”
That shift changed everything.
Instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty, she began making space for it. Instead of pretending to know every answer, she became more interested in asking better questions. Instead of filling every silence, she learnt to listen.
For Vivi, leading became less about performing confidence and more about trusting the process of discovery.
It is an idea that sits in sharp contrast to many traditional ideas of leadership. Organisations often reward decisiveness, speed and certainty. Yet creative work rarely unfolds in neat, predictable ways. New possibilities emerge through experimentation, disagreement and moments of not knowing.
Jennifer echoes this when she describes the rehearsal room as a place where certainty can sometimes become the biggest obstacle. When a leader already believes they know exactly how something should unfold, they stop noticing the unexpected contributions that others bring.
The irony, of course, is that the very people we invite because of their creativity are often given the least opportunity to use it.
In the end, the rehearsal room offers a simple perspective for anyone leading: you do not have to own every answer to create something extraordinary. You simply have to create the space where the best answers can emerge.
About the Author
Kavya Misra is a writer and producer with a background in theatre, films and digital content. Her master’s in English literature forms the foundation for all her creative and corporate projects. In addition to this, Kavya has an extensive background in theatre. She has written and produced plays. She has also performed at festivals like Bharat Rang Mahotsav by National School of Drama, India and International Theatre Festival of Kerala, India.
