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2015 PPAI EXPO REVIEW
MARCH 2015 •
PPB
• 25
Jeffrey Tambor:
Embrace Discomfort
To Find Purpose And Passion
GENERAL SESSION
JEFFREY TAMBOR’S GREATEST GIFT as an actor may
well be that he can bring life and light to any character. In
speaking to groups like the attendees at Tuesday’s general
session, “Performing Your Life,” Tambor clearly brings life
and light to his messages as well.
Whether he’s applauding sound and lighting engineers
or jokingly admonishing volunteers for not being bad
enough at their reading skills, Tambor puts on no airs and
puts no distance between himself and the individuals who
come to learn from him. Born and raised in San Francisco by
Ukrainian Jewish parents, Tambor developed a love for per-
forming while visiting a neighborhood theater.
The veteran actor, master teacher and Golden Globe
winner said that, too often, he has seen individuals with tal-
ent stop giving life and work their all. “What’s keeping you
from performing your life?” he asked. “I’ve spoken to some
billionaires, to some millionaires, and I’ve seen 80 percent of
people settle for more comfortable rooms and more com-
fortable lives, and I’m an enemy to that. I’m very much
about discomfort.”
It is discomfort that can help us find our purpose;
Tambor encouraged attendees to regard what makes them
uncomfortable as their purpose and passion in life. “A pur-
pose is not an interest. What grabs you around the neck and
makes you want to throw up, that is your passion.”
Whether a passion or purpose, in pursuing these we
strive to achieve balance between planning for the future
and doing a good job of achieving it, something Tambor
says can only happen by embracing failure.
“I try to keep the concept of ‘good’ out, and try to keep
accident and improvisation, and getting lost on the page,
‘in.’ I love to do a thing in rehearsal and in performance
where I come out and say, ‘Let’s just wreck it.’ And in wreck-
ing it, one particle will come out and you’ll go, ‘There—
there—there,’” he says. “It’s like a writer who writes a hun-
dred pages, and he’s good, but on page 101 he goes,
‘What the heck is that? What is that, what is that?’ And if
he’s a good writer he throws away the 99 pages and he
begins his novel there.”
While promotional products business is so often about
doing things right, Tambor says that to find happiness, we
need to “do it wrong. Keep failing. The nerves, the fear …
adore that. That’s your instinct.”
In doing something ‘wrong,’ people can find their true
voice and their true passions. One volunteer found this out
firsthand, by taking the stage to read a letter aloud—badly—
for the audience. While the first attempts were not success-
ful (Tambor assisted by bouncing the man up and down by
his waist), the volunteer eventually found his voice, the voice
that he should use in pursuing his passion and his purpose.
An authentic life is led with “enthusiasmos,” says
Tambor, who finds inspiration in his children, such as his 10-
year-old son, who plays lacrosse with true enthusiasm
despite being “the worst lacrosse player in the world,” he
said in a whisper over raucous laughter. “Enthusiasmos.
Bring it to your life and to your work.”
And Tambor doesn’t want people to sacrifice enthusiasm
for the sake of looking or being cool in the eyes of others.
“Being cool is a losing proposition. The world doesn’t pay
on cool,” he said. “The world pays on ‘I’m good, and I’m
going to help your ass.’”
Moreover, Tambor wants people to find joy in everything.
“Something that I tell people is adore everything, because
this whole trip is a move from joy to sadness to acceptance
to failure; there’s a lot of life that goes on,” he says.
“And, being that we’re here for a finite time and things
have a way of working out, I would say adore everything on
the journey. Just know that you’re on the journey and be
committed to the journey. The journey consists of finding
yourself and changing yourself, being unafraid to disappoint
others, finding your passion, not your interest, and leading
an authentic life.”—JEN ALEXANDER