The Art of Not Knowing means experiencing something as if for the first time. You may have memorized a scene and know what is going to hap-pen, but you mustn’t know. You have to experience the scene’s events and dia-logue as if for the first time. In a state of Not Knowing, your true emotional responses become stimulated by using the other actor as a catalyst.
I was working with a writer who wanted to see how a few scenes from his new comedy screenplay would work. Brena played the part of the widow who had just returned from a funeral after burying her husband. John played a young man who accompanies her home. The writer considered his play a comedy. He thought this was a really funny scene.
(The two actors laugh as they walk into the apartment. John follows the script direction and is laughing. Brena is shak-ing and seems fearful.)
JOHN
How do you stop people from bugging you about getting married?
BRENA (laughing)
Do I have to answer? Old Aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poke me in the ribs,
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cackle, and tell me, “You’re next.” They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.
(starts to cry)
Okay, how can you tell when a blond is making chocolate-chip cookies in your kitchen?
(John reaches over and hugs Brena.) JOHN
I don’t know.
BRENA (crying)
You find M&M shells all over the floor.
(John starts to laugh and Brena’s tears change to a smile.) BRENA
Thanks for the ride.
JOHN You’re welcome.
(Brena breaks out of character.) BRENA (to Jeremiah)
This is a comedy. I shouldn’t be crying.
JEREMIAH: Yes, it is a comedy, but stop judging and trust your intuition. You didn’t expect to cry. Did you? Then trust yourself, let us see your pain.
BRENA (to Jeremiah)
But the material should be light and fun.
JEREMIAH: Who says? Now let’s look at the scene dramatically. Your husband has just died. That’s a traumatic experience for any wife.
BRENA (to Jeremiah)
But she’s trying to seduce John, not cry all over him.
JEREMIAH: That’s correct. But intuitively something deeper is going on. The seduction is on the surface. Underneath is your character’s pain, your loneli-ness, and fear. Which is exactly what a woman who has been married for several years would feel being with a strange man. What’s going on in your character’s mind? Is she afraid? What is she thinking? “Does he think I’m attractive? Is he going to make the first move or should I? What if he rejects me? He’s handsome.
I need someone.” Brena, keep going—trust yourself.
(They continue the scene.) BRENA
What would you like to drink?
JOHN No. I’m fine.
BRENA
I’m going to have a scotch on the rocks, and you?
JOHN
Nothing, thanks. I have to be going.
BRENA
Please stay for a few moments.
You smell like Harry. That’s why I let you pick me up.
JOHN
But you asked me for a ride. I thought you needed a lift.
(Brena moves very close to John and strokes his face.) BRENA
I need a lift.
(Brena kisses John.)
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BRENA Harry.
JOHN Harry?
BRENA
Your eyes remind me of Harry.
JOHN I’m John.
BRENA
And you smell just like him.
JOHN
Who, Harry? . . . wait a minute, isn’t he the guy we buried?
BRENA (laughing) Yes.
(John interrupts the scene.) JOHN (to Jeremiah)
Why is she laughing?
JEREMIAH: Just go with the laughter. Don’t judge.
Again, Brena’s subconscious is leading her in the right direction. The laugh-ter is an escape from pain and depression.
(John starts to laugh along with Brena.) JOHN
Holy Smokes . . . Harry is your husband. We just buried Harry. I was doing a favor for my mother, escorting her to the funeral. I had no idea that he was your husband. You were the one who hinted you needed a lift.
BRENA I am very grateful.
(Cut to end of scene)
BRENA (to Jeremiah)
But why was I crying?
JEREMIAH: Once you have read the material, your subconscious mind knows how you should feel. Your logical mind doesn’t care how you feel and it doesn’t have a clue, because it’s only concerned with logical results. Your subconscious gives creative answers that you don’t expect. Your subconscious—your intuition—
gave you your tears. That’s the Art of Not Knowing, Brena. Remember, you just buried your husband. I think you were brilliant. Thank you.
BRENA (to Jeremiah)
But it’s a comedy.
JEREMIAH: So.
BRENA (to Jeremiah)
But in the script it says I married him for money.
JEREMIAH: That’s a fact. But what we are interested in is your feeling for Harry, not what you think about the script. The writer does the thinking, you do the experiencing.
This is a perfect example of the Art of Not Knowing. It is the subconscious leading your performance. Scary isn’t it? That you can read a piece of material once and come up with a performance that surprises you. It’s because, one, you have been acting all your life, so you have a reservoir of emotions and experi-ence stored away in your subconscious. And, two, the subconscious is much more creative than your logical brain. The only problem is access. Not Knowing is one way to touch your subconscious. Not Knowing puts you in danger, heightens your awareness, and stimulates your emotional reservoir. This is what happened to Brena. She let her intuition override her ideas, and the result was a brilliant performance. Her tears gave us insight into her relationship with her dead husband. The laughter on the line, “We just buried your husband,”
allowed her to break the heaviness of the situation by laughing, which led her
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into the seduction of John. That’s the creative process. It happened without her thinking about it. It’s automatic and came from her subconscious, not the logi-cal part of her brain. You could work for days trying to logilogi-cally construct how to play the scene, yet still not arrive at an answer that will work as creatively as Brena’s did.
In the scene below imagine that you are Susan Sarandon. How would you prepare and what would you plan to do? In the movie White Palace, Susan Sarandon and James Spader are talking. Spader tells her his wife died. (Here and everywhere in this book, actions in parentheses are not script directions. They are what the actors actually did.)
(Sarandon and Spader are sitting at the bar, drinking.) SARANDON
Sorry about your lady dumping you.
SPADER
She didn’t exactly dump me.
SARANDON
Oh yeah? What did she do then?
SPADER She died.
SARANDON Died. You mean died?
SPADER Yeah.
(Sarandon starts to laugh.) SARANDON How’d she do that?
SPADER Car turned over.
SARANDON (still laughing)
Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t believe . . .
SPADER It’s all right.
SARANDON
I don’t know why I’m laughing.
Your wife died.
SPADER
I guess no one ever died on you before.
SARANDON (smiling)
No. Charley died.
SPADER
Charley? Is that your doggie?
SARANDON No. Charley, my kid.
(She becomes sober and serious.) SPADER Your kid?
SARANDON I know. I know.
SPADER How did he die?
SARANDON
Leukemia. What can you do. The world spins around.
If a lesser actor than Susan Sarandon were preparing for this scene, she would probably try ahead of time to imagine what it would be like to lose a son, and then, in the scene, try to experience the proper painful emotion and attitude of grief. Sarandon obviously did not plan what she should feel or should act.
Without opinions and expectations, she took what was written in the script and turned it into a brilliant performance by dealing with the moment and letting her laughter come through. We see her pain, and we believe her. She lets her intuitive response inform her emotion and color her dialogue. Sarandon, being the great film actor that she is, probably hadn’t planned to laugh at that point.
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She probably did not know beforehand how she was going to react. Her response seemed intuitive, and she went with it.