The Great Acting Blog: “Creativity Mistakes Help Us Grow”
Richard Burton, during his 1967 interview with Kenneth Tynan, says he likes to be “free” on stage, not giving the same performance night after night. I was especially piqued however, when he said; “I’m invited to be bad some nights, if I happen to be bad that night”. Burton says this as though it is a price he’s willing to pay for his more spontaneous approach to acting, or being “free” as he puts it.
Sadly, we cannot all be Richard Burton, but even so, on the surface, this being bad idea seems deeply counter-intuitive, it goes against our desire to want to please the audience and for good workmanship. Further, actors make themselves vulnerable enough without the risk of allowing weaker moments into their performances.
What Burton is talking about of course, is taking a risk, a gamble, otherwise known as being creative. It’s about creating in the moment as oppose to re-creating in performance what you did in rehearsal. This approach however, as with all efforts of creativity, doesn’t always deliver the perfect result.
I also came across an article about making mistakes, seeking out  problems as a means of finding solutions. It used the example of Chris Rock, who takes between six months and a year to develop one hour of comedy.  He goes to clubs informally and just riffs with the audience. Most of the time he goes down like a lead a balloon, but the point is he does this in order to find out what could be funny and then refine it.
The lesson here, is that we cannot improve without attempting new things which might not work. If everything we do works all the time, then it probably means that we are operating in a comfort zone where we already know the outcomes  – this has got nothing whatsoever to do with creativity. Being creative is often about trying things and seeing what will happen.
The essence of creativity is being in the moment. Creativity needs spontaneity, and this spontaneity can lead to us being “bad”. However, this badness can help us to grow as artists.
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