Why do we stop listening to our girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, parents, friends, children? Why do we constantly talk about our prob-lems but feel that nobody is paying attention? Probably because they aren’t.
Everyone is too busy, overworked, and self-absorbed. Many of us have forgotten the art of listening. We are so assaulted by information, language, and adver-tisements that we tune out. We are not only oblivious to the meaning of the words, we are oblivious to the emotions behind them.
Hear everything. True listening improves your awareness. If you were to participate in a mixing session for a movie, you would see how many sounds go into a single scene, sounds you hear all the time but of which you’re not con-sciously aware. It’s not unusual for a scene to have twenty or more sound tracks, with a single different sound on each track—dialogue, footsteps, car alarms, clothing rustling, laughter, music, people talking, doors opening and closing, dogs barking, traffic noise, sounds of nature—all taking place at the same time. When all the sounds are mixed together at the proper volume, the result is plain old real-life sound. In an ordinary room, listen for the sounds that most people would never hear simply because they are not listening.
Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen master, gives perfect advice for actors: try to stop thinking when you listen to someone. Forget what you want to say, and just lis-ten, because if you have an idea and are trying to respond to what someone says, you won’t hear everything. Your understanding will be one-sided. When you lis-ten, be completely involved. Usually when you listen to a person say some-thing, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your
own opinion. If the statement agrees with your opinion, you accept it. But if it does not, you will reject it, and you may not even really hear it. Do not be caught by this or by taking what the person says only as a statement without understanding the spirit behind the words.
Just listen. When you listen to the other actor, forget all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions. What is right and wrong is mostly irrele-vant. The meaning of the words is never as important as the emotion behind them. Listen to how the other actor feels about what she says. Don’t judge!
Even when the literal meaning of the words contradicts her feelings, go with the feelings. Your experience will come from listening to her experience and seeing her emotions. You want your subconscious mind to assimilate this input and then react emotionally and intuitively.
In the following scene, Janet, tall and sun-tanned, is open and aware. Rob, a beginning actor, is pleasant and good-looking. He is seriously concerned with the directions in the script and what they tell him to do.
(Rob is uptight from the beginning. He is not listening to Janet. He keeps his eyes on the page. He hears her words, but only to listen for his cue line. He doesn’t see her face or respond to any changes in Janet’s tone.)
JANET (laughing) Do you ski?
ROB
(eyes on the page) I snow board.
JANET Are you married?
ROB Separated.
JANET (smiling)
You mean she is in the hotel room waiting for you.
(Rob’s eyes still on the page. He never looks at her.) ROB
No. I mean like, I’m waiting for the divorce papers.
(Janet is intent on Rob. She is sensitive to what he says and how he says it. She is believable.)
JANET
How long were you married?
(Rob is still concentrating on the script.) ROB
Two years. Until I discovered she was in love with the shop-ping channel and I was twenty-one thousand dollars in debt.
JANET
That’s what I make a year.
(Rob is really stiff and proper.) ROB
My accountant said it will take three years to pay it off. I have every penny accounted for. I lost 10 pounds so far.
(Janet laughs with real enjoyment.) JANET (laughing)
Maybe I should try that diet.
JEREMIAH: Rob, what did she just do?
ROB (to Jeremiah)
Uh . . . What do you mean?
JEREMIAH: I mean, she just did something. Do you know what she did?
ROB (to Jeremiah)
She . . . I don’t know.
JEREMIAH: She laughed. You didn’t hear her, and you didn’t see her. You weren’t doing a scene with her, you were doing a scene with the script. I want The Maestro’s Ears 155
you to look at Janet when she’s talking. Don’t take your eyes off of her. Listen to the sound of her voice. Try to imitate her tone of voice. If she laughs, I want you to laugh. If she raises her voice, raise yours. If she gets angry, you get angry.
I want you to do everything exactly like she does. Look at your script only when you need your next line.
I whisper in Janet’s ear that I want her to yell on the first line, laugh on the second, and be loving on the third. Then repeat that pattern until the end of the scene. I ask for this to force Rob into concentrating on her. He has to concen-trate on her in order to be able to mimic her. They continue.
JANET (really SHOUTING) DO YOU SKI?!
(Rob is surprised. He looks frightened. He looks at Jeremiah.)
JEREMIAH: Don’t look at me. Look at her! You can’t tell what she’s doing when you look at me. Imitate what she’s doing. Janet, start it again.
JANET (again, SHOUTING) DO YOU SKI?!
(This time he shouts his line at the same level as hers.) ROB
(shouting) I SNOW BOARD!
(Now she changes and laughs as she gives her line.) JANET
(laughing) Are you married?
(Rob, again surprised, laughs as he speaks. By now he is watching her like a hawk so he won’t miss what she’s doing.)
ROB (laughing) Separated.
(Then, as Jeremiah asked her, she becomes loving.)
JANET (loving)
You mean she is in the hotel room waiting for you.
ROB
(loving in return)
No. I mean like, I’m waiting for the divorce papers.
(Rob is working hard to catch her every expression, atti-tude, and tone of voice. It makes him look believable even though he is shouting.)
JANET (yelling)
HOW LONG WERE YOU MARRIED?!
ROB (shouting back)
TWO YEARS! UNTIL I DISCOVERED SHE WAS IN LOVE WITH THE SHOP-PING CHANNEL AND I WAS TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN DEBT!
JEREMIAH: (to the group) See how his performance immediately changed? I told him to mimic her exactly, so he had no choice. He had to concentrate on her. (to Rob) You concentrated on Janet, so you reacted to her, not the page.
Even though you were shouting, we actually believed you. Did you feel the dif-ference?
ROB (to Jeremiah)
It was scary.
JEREMIAH: Sure it’s scary. That’s because you were alive. To mimic her exactly, you had to concentrate on her. You were forced to hear what she was doing—was she soft, loud, sad, fearful, intimate? Was she stuttering or stam-mering? Did she pause, giggle, laugh? You didn’t have time to worry about keep-ing your eyes on the page. So you really concentrated on her. And you were scared because you didn’t know what might happen. That’s what life is—that’s what acting is—you take everything as it comes and deal with it, and it’s scary.
If you act according to what she does, you’re relating; if you don’t, you’re in your head. Stay out of your head, and react honestly to what you see and hear.
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