"No eyeballing!" one of my directors used to constantly remind us. He was talking about eye contact. There's a certain amount of eye-to-eye contact that is natural in life and therefore onstage or -screen, but actors often lock eyes way too much.
In Audition, acting guru Michael Shurtleff writes, "Actors are the only people on earth who stare into each other's eyes when they are talking to each other." People, he explains, look internally at what they're talking about, as though seeing images on "our own personal, private TV screen." Anyway, if you stare into someone's eyes too long, your own eyes go out of focus, he points out. We just don't do it.
Los Angeles teacher Deryn Warren (deryn@sbcglobal.net), a disciple of Shurtleff, elaborates. In reality—if we're describing an ocean, for example—we tend to look off into the middle distance, creating an image by gesturing with our arms and hands, sometimes with our body posture, too. Then we check back with the other person to make sure he or she got it. So that's what we should be doing when acting, too.
"There are so many reasons not to stare," she says. "You're embarrassed, you're crying, you're trying to set a scene for the other person." You're shy, or you're too furious to look the other guy in the eye, or you're too guilt-stricken. While having a serious argument with a coworker, I was unable to look at her. It was a long time afterward before I could do so. I remember how a boss once fired me—giving me the news while gazing out the window: Eye contact is so deeply personal.
Warren also notes that, when auditioning, you should not stare at the fake onstage person whom you're imagining as the recipient of your monologue or the partner in your dialogue. "You don't get Brownie points for creating a person we can't see," she warns. You should check in with your invisible scene partner maybe 10 percent of the time (possibly more if it's a dialogue).
Of course there are plenty of good reasons to maintain eye contact. In Advanced Acting, Robert Cohen mentions several: You're studying your partner's nonverbal response and reactions, looking for clues as to how to proceed with playing your objective. You want to let your partner know that "you're genuinely inquiring, not just making a rote throwaway remark…." But, says Cohen, looking away from the object of your attention can be an equally effective way to pursue your objective. However, you have to be looking not just away, but at something—something significant.
For example, if you can't convince your scene partner of something important, you can put him on edge by looking at others in the scene who might aid you in achieving your goal, or by looking around, searching for others who may not even be there. In other words, don't look away just to look away; make an active choice to look elsewhere. "Inexperienced actors glance at the floor mainly out of stage fright," Cohen writes. "Whatever your acting goal is, it can rarely be achieved by staring at the floor, or, for that matter, off into the flies." You can look at a significant prop, or at the set (if it feeds your action in the moment), or out the window if there might be something there that could conceivably aid you in your objective. You can even look at—or for—God, he suggests.
If you don't want to stare blankly at the floor, you also don't want to do the following, which Warren lists among her pet peeves: If your partner is painting an imaginary scenario for you—as in that old Western cliché, "Honey, I'm gonna build a house for us…."—don't look out at that castle in the air. "That's so fake," says Warren. This is one of those times when you want to look at your partner as you listen.
Uta Hagen (as she describes in A Challenge for the Actor) used to show her students how artificial eyeballing can be by asking them to tell her what they did just before coming to class—while maintaining direct eye contact with her. They couldn't do it. We have to look away, into our mind's eye, to reconstruct events, then intermittently at our partner to assure ourselves of her approval or disapproval, her rapt attention, her understanding, her sharing of our viewpoint, her amusement, her righteous indignation, her sympathy—whatever response we want.
So why do actors gaze at each other in such an unseemly fashion? Hagen writes that beginning actors believe they can make truthful contact only by keeping their eyes glued on the other guy. Shurtleff writes that it's to indicate there's a relationship. The operative word here is indicate—that's something you never want to do.
It's worthwhile to note that the amount of eye contact that is considered customary in real life varies from culture to culture, in the same way that different cultures feel comfortable with different amounts of personal space between people during conversation. Warren has had Chinese students who tended to avoid looking into their scene partners' eyes; to them, it felt rude. "If, onstage, you're not looking into the other person's eyes the same amount that is normal in our culture, it will be noticeable," she says.
When you're not locking eyes, you need to maintain a sense of connection, an awareness of the other person's reactions. I remember doing exercises in which two scene partners spoke their lines while standing back to back and slowly walking away from each other until they ended up shouting their lines at each other from different rooms—always maintaining that invisible thread of connection, that hyperawareness that's such a crucial part of acting. "During any dialogue, contact can be made through the use of all five senses," Hagen reminds us.
Similar to eyeballing is the tendency toward too much aimless body contact, or pawing. "Every single touch should be like a major event in a scene," says Warren, "unless the characters are very familiar with each other, lean against each other automatically." In a play or scene, the first time one character physically touches another, it should be a big event. "Don't touch in a general sense," warns Warren. "Every touch should be specific and meaningful, and it should be received that way. Each touch is a message. If you do it in a general way, to fake closeness or sexuality, that's [too] obvious." She compares touching to props—both should be used with meaning and investment, not just as idle stage business. "If I put my finger on the thigh of one of my students, believe me, everyone in the whole class is thinking, 'What is she doing?'" says Warren. "And that's just a fingertip."
And, while we're on the subject of touching, another mistake actors often make: They look at the hand that's touching them, or the spot on their body that's been handled, as though visual proof of the deed were needed. In real life, we're hyperaware of bodily contact, however brief and subtle it may be, but we don't need to look at the spot itself; we can feel it, in the same way we can perceive, through peripheral vision, that someone's staring at us. It's not the other guy's hand, or the spot, that's significant—it's the fact of having been touched. Of course, you may want to send a specific message to the groper by staring pointedly at the place of contact, but that itself has become a cliché. By the way, along the same lines, when the telephone rings in a scene, don't look at it!
"Looking at someone is almost like touching them," concludes Warren. "You don't want to overly touch someone, just as you don't want to overly stare at someone. It makes casting people and audiences uncomfortable. If you do choose to stare, do it [for a specific reason]—not just because you have bad technique." BSW