The accidental director

She’s certainly a class act. But how did she manage it? Nina Raine, the 36-year-old writer-director, has established a formidable position in the British theatre. Her first play, Rabbit, opened at a pub venue in Islington in 2007. It transferred to New York and has since been performed all over the world. Last year she directed April de Angelis’s family comedy Jumpy at the Royal Court and the show has just transferred to the Duke of York’s in the West End. Yet, the way Raine tells it, her career has been nothing but a series of blunders and accidents.

She left Oxford with an English degree and a few drama productions under her belt. ‘I thought about being an academic. For about five minutes. Both my parents are academics.’ Her mother, Ann Pasternak Slater, is a scholar and translator. Her father is the poet Craig Raine. ‘So I had this doom-laden feeling I was going to be an academic.’