n Michael Peppe's 1986 article entitled "Why our art is so bad," he speaks of  "the ever-dwindling fraction of artists still carrying the primitive tailbone, talent, still willing to subject it to a discipline of technique and a scrutiny of mind, and in addition courageous enough to suspend it between the jaws of personal risk…" "But then talent," he continues, "discipline, labor, self-criticism, and courage are no longer words one generally overhears in conversations about art these days.  Rather one hears words like unique, stylistic, experimental, entertaining, revolutionary, important, and of course, the sparkliest flattery of all, in art and handsoap, new" [The Guests Go in to Supper, p. 343].

This passage manages to articulate for me one of my most elusive feelings. When I watch a performance, I often feel that I'm watching something "uniquely entertainingly revolutionary" and "stylistically experimentally important." And that this performance is nevertheless a complete waste of time since the performer doesn't seem to have the very first or most basic notions of what the performer's art entails. As if a "musician" simply didn't know how to hold his instrument or a "golfer" his club. I hear people say that a performance had a lot of "energy," or that someone was "intense" or "funny"—while all along I could see that the actor had no idea that he shouldn't have been making every gesture identically with both arms, shouldn't have started every one of his lines on the identical pitch, shouldn't have nodded his head and gotten louder each time he emphasized a word. Where others see a "unique" performance, I see one that is merely unique.

These are curmudgeonly words. Obviously people go to the theatre or to a film for a wide variety of reasons. Some go just to get out of the house, some to be seen, some for the sets and costumes, some to see famous people onstage, some for a good story, some to watch actors feel things truthfully, etc. etc., on and on. I think everyone gets to go for whatever reason they want to. 

For my part, my favorite thing about watching acting is to see a performer who delivers on two levels at once.  1) I like an actor who makes perspicacious sense of the words he is speaking, and of the relationships and events implied therein. 2) I like an actor who is familiar with acting's age old practical skills--such as countering, holding, framing, curve-crossing, stepping in, cheating back, building, overlapping, topping, giving focus, pitching the voice, flinging the gesture, throwing away, and more.  Referring back to Peppe's remarks above, these are "no longer words one generally overhears in conversations about art [acting] these days." And yet, for me, it is precisely these things that clear the deck, so to speak, so that I can actually see what uniqueness is there, hear what is revolutionary about what a performer is doing. These skills serve as the signposts of  "talent, discipline, labor, self-criticism, and courage."

At the Actors' Training Project, we have this quote from Kandinsky on our T-shirts: "The measure of a student's sincerity shall be the quality of his tools." This, of course, is Kandinsky's ever-gracious way of saying that he didn't give a damn how "new" your work was if you weren't "willing to subject [your talent] to a discipline of technique and a scrutiny of mind." Curmudgeonly, yes?

In this context, it has become one of my teaching missions to bring back into common use The Focus Point. Ah, comfort of my performing life, friend to the drifting performance, lifeline for the failing vocal instrument—I can't say enough good about The Focus Point.  From my perspective, an actor may have researched his character, kept his impulses alive—he may be truly listening to his scene partner and feel utterly in the moment—and he may still be giving a slovenly, dull, invisible performance if he is without The Focus Point. What finally gives a performance a sense of polish and generosity is the use of…The Focus Point.

I wrote the following notes in February of 1999:

The Focus Point is the point at the center of the farthest surface from you (e.g. the back wall of an auditorium), about two to three inches above eye level.

On this point, we "see" a "screen" on which we let the mind's eye see what we are talking about.

This is the same point on which ballet dancers, singers and professional speakers focus when they work. It serves many a purpose:

1.   It gives you a way of "taking stock of" or acknowledging all of the space you will need to fill with your performance, i.e. a way of adjusting the size of what you will do (shouters and whisperers are performers with no focus point).
2.   It gives you the specific place you need to send your breath when you are speaking. When used expressively and efficiently, the breath moves out through the frontal sinus cavity with great concentration and travels in an arc to the focus point (imagine the trajectory of the water when you have your thumb over a garden hose, or the path of a ball thrown overhand). If you have no place to send the breath (voice), it loses focus and wanders around over the audience's heads looking for a destination--and they actually hear the sound as lifeless, wooden, flat, without energy, etc. An archer organizes his efforts while concentrating to the utmost ON THE BULL'S EYE. The actor's "bull's eye" is the Focus Point.
3.   It simplifies your performance so that it can be seen--i.e. your eyes are not wandering around, you aren't spending your energy trying to figure out what to look out, or trying to focus in a vague "middle distance"--your face is fully visible so that we can enjoy your artistry optimally.
4.   It keeps you from looking at the ground. Remember that "the eyes are the window to the soul"--so that if I cannot see your eyes, I don't know what's happening in your soul.
5.   Remember that the audience will look at whatever you look at--they rely on you to tell them what to focus their attention on. Stage floors are generally not dressed. Generally, the most astonishing and luxurious of sets will end at the stage floor, which will be bare or otherwise neutral. We do not, therefore, do anything to draw the audience's attention to the floor.
6.   Ever had the feeling that a lecturer was directing his/her comments directly to you? This was a speaker with a focus point. When you look out into the audience and single people out to address, everyone else feels left out (and embarrassed); when you look at a focus point, everyone feels included (and relaxed).
7.   When you are on stage and everyone you're talking to is on
the focus point (including dead bodies), the audience feels that they are in the action, it's happening all around them. When you put all of the action on stage with you, the audience members are observers rather than participants. Remember that stage space is ILLUSORY space and NOT LITERAL space--and what you see on your focus point is as far away or as close as your mind's eye finds it to be. You can be talking to someone at the other end of a ship in a storm, or whispering to someone so close you can feel the heat on his or her face. The audience is the middle of whatever, which is exciting.

Some practical notes:
1) Some performers experience this as an area of the
back wall rather than a "point"--and have a "sense" of a "presence" there rather than a visual experience. Whatever gives you a sense of there being a receiver or partner there.
2) Make the distinction between "looking" and "seeing." Looking means your eyes are set on a point and glazing over (the "deer-in-the-headlights" look, or the "phoning-in" look). This usually happens when you are holding your breath; one's mantra in this case should always be EXHALE EXHALE EXHALE. Seeing means that your eyes are registering stimuli from without. Never let your mouth say what your mind's eye has not seen first--then you'll never glaze over.
3) In a full play, playing a scene with a partner or partners, maintain a "split focus": feel or otherwise stay connected to, aware of, your focus point, AND focus on your partner. In a "fourth wall" piece, stay aware of focus point AND fourth wall; turning your back to the audience, stay aware of the focus point AND whatever you are looking at on stage.
4) In film, the camera lens is the focus point. So: in the theatre, the focus point is stationery, just as the audience's eye is stationary in relation to the action. It is the actor who moves: upstage is the stage's "long shot," and downstage is the stage's "close-up." This is why understanding the principles of stage space is so critical for the theatre actor. In film, the actor may be still while the camera lens (standing in for the audience's eye) is moving--out for the long shot, in for the close up.

It is said that an auditioning director can see the quality of an actor's work in the first few lines. Actually, what the actor does with his or her focus point before he or she opens his or her mouth is also a good indicator of what will come. There are the actors who prepare on stage to begin the audition monologue by looking intently into the floor, or who start to speak without a sense of where the sound is headed out in the house. Since the voice will sound wherever you put your breath, I know that this actor's voice, when he starts to speak, will sound in a puddle around his feet or in a fog over the stage lip. It CANNOT be otherwise. An actor who hits center-center--or even better, up-center (if there's light, of course), takes a moment to find his focus point, then to connect his breath to it, is an actor who has the technical skills that inspire trust and respect from the viewers.

Then let the audience see all the study and love that have gone into your preparation! Break that leg!

The 1999 Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov is highly inspirational on the subject of people's calling themselves "actors" for all kinds of reasons other than that they know acting. In the following passage, someone has just interrupted her lecture on Ibsen to protest that she addresses her listeners as "students" when they are really "professionals" in that they earn their livelihood in the field:

"I don't think there is a professional in America. How do you like that?…I want to say that I have very little respect for your ability to call yourselves professional. 'Professional' means to me something else than it means to you. 'Professional' does not mean belonging to Equity. 'Professional' also does not mean having jobs…When I am acting and involved with the [play], I don't give a good goddamn about it… You have to ask yourself, very quietly, inside, "Do I have the craft to do this?" [pp. 95-96]

Curmudgeonly? Yes. And frankly, I throw my hat in the ring with the curmudgeons. Peppe, Kandinsky, Adler—I like these guys, we speak the same language, I trust them.

This week I taught a lovely young woman how to use The Focus Point.  Unsure at first, once she found it, her whole body released, her breathing lowered and slowed, her face opened and lit up: "That feels perfect," she said. So I feel very hopeful for the future.

Each of us just has to ask ourselves, very quietly, inside, "Do I have The Focus Point to do this?"

Lissa Tyler Renaud is an award-winning actress,
a PhD scholar, and the Program Director of The
Actors' Training Project

© 2000 Lissa Tyler Renaud ALL RIGHTS RESERVED