Mistakes, Acting, and a Buddhist Gift

Robin Williams said in an interview on Inside The Actor's Studio in 2001 that one of the best pieces of acting advice he'd ever received was from Jeff Bridges on the set of the Fisher King. Jeff told him that when there's a mistake, go with it because it's a Buddhist gift. Robin went on to elaborate that it's especially true on film because “film is all about creating moments for THAT moment.”

I was struck by that comment: "creating moments for that moment." In the context of film making it makes perfect sense. When making a film actors will work and rework scenes until they capture the moment the director is trying to create. They'll shoot take after take until they get it just right. If only we were so lucky as to be able work and rework the moments of our live to make them as perfect as the movies. We don't, of course, have that option in our day to day lives. That's why the movies are magical, and our live can seem so mundane. However, there are those moments... those moments when the magic occurs.

I experienced precisely such a moment in the one acting class I took in my life. It was a moment that could have been marred by a mistake, but it was enchanted by it. For our final project my partner and I had chosen to do the open scene from Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It's acrimonious beginning to an emotionally exhausting play, and we thoroughly enjoyed being utterly nasty to one another during our rehearsals. We worked and reworked the moments until the were air tight.

The crucial moment arrived, we were on stage in front of our class, and to abandon all modesty we were hammering it. We were in the moment. Unfortunately my staging started to fall a beat or two behind the dialog. The nerves of situation made it difficult to keep ourselves from speeding up. At one critical point, just after I'd removed my shoes and put them away, I needed to wheel around and confront my partner to escalate the argument. I took off my shoes, but because we were talking a bit too fast I didn't get them put away. So in the performance that counted the most for our grade, unlike what I did in any of our rehearsals, I held my shoes in my hands and gesticulated with them throughout the entire argument scene. It was a mistake, and for the briefest moment, I saw my partner's eyes widen with the unspoken question, “What the fuck are you doing with your shoes?” But we both went with it, stayed in the moment, and we created that moment, and we rocked that moment. We accepted the Buddhist gift of staying in the moment, and we created magic. Our instructor and our classmates were bowled over.

Everyday we're handed script which is our life, and we are expect to do a cold read. Most days we stumble through well enough because our experience serves as rehearsals, and we can make it mostly believable. Most days we make mistakes, but it's our choice what we do with them. We can push back and resist the moment. We can break character and let the mistake stop us cold, or we can accept the Buddhist gift. We can embrace the mistake, and by doing so we can discover what magic it holds. That's how we create moments that live for our whole lives.