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More on the Art of Not Knowing

The thing is to become a master and in your old age acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

Henry Miller

The First Time

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 happen, but you mustn’t know. You have to experience the scene’s events and dialogue 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 ...

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