On the Focus Point: The Next Generation
		By Lissa Tyler Renaud, Ph.D.
	My boy, who is six, spent last summer in a rigorous children's opera program. Of course I was eager to see how the director, Sanford Jones, would run rehearsals for his original, full-length work, "The Awakened One." His cast ranged in age from five to about twelve, and it was a pretty unruly gang that greeted him on the first day. I wondered what he would do to bring focus to the group. Then, to my pleasant surprise, I saw the three large Xs taped just above eye level on the back wall, and felt great confidence in him. These Xs marked the three "focus points" of the theatre—house center, house left and house right. They were an absolutely integral part of my growing up in the theatre, in both my training and performing—especially The Focus Point, the point at the center. Over the years, I have seen the Focus Point gradually lose vitality as a training concept here in America, and in turn, virtually fall out of use here in performance. In my own teaching, however, I promote its use with tremendous conviction; and have found nothing comparable to it for helping students calm their breathing, gather themselves physically and collect their thoughts—all of which are aspects of my teaching responsibilities at the Voice Training Project. My private voice studio, in Oakland, CA, is called the Voice Training Project. There, I provide instruction and consultation to individuals whose professions require them to have an especially excellent speaking voice. This includes those who give speeches and talks, stage and film actors, television and radio anchors, and singers, as well as other professionals who are committed to superior vocal delivery and persuasive communication. For over twenty-five years, my voice work--with actors, as well as with high-profile figures in public service, business and the media—has been stimulated by the beauty and authority of the speaking voice. Vocal training today takes advantage, of course, of the work of well-known teachers such as Cicely Berry and Kristin Linklater. At the same time, my practice also benefits incalculably from the work of many other brilliant contributors to the voice field, many of whom are not yet well-known or have already been forgotten. In my experience, a student's affinity for a particular vocal "method" is best nurtured after comprehensive training is completed, so that the period of actual training serves to broaden rather than narrow a student's focus. I have been loyal to this belief in all of my teaching work over the years. The needs of my students typically fall into two categories: 1. The mechanics of vocal production, or issues related to breathing, placement, resonance, range, diction, reduction of accents and regionalisms; and 2. The principles of oral interpretation, including information about basic oratorical notions such as structuring, intonation patterns, dynamics, phrasing, style, tone and gesture. There are two things that are most characteristic of my approach to these needs. First, I am convinced that vocal instruction itself is made most fruitful by simultaneous training in physical alignment. After twenty years of conventional dance training, my interest in movement took a decisive turn when I met dancer/choreographer John McConville in 1984. His inquiry into physical alignment and the performer’s voice represented a profound synthesis of his own bel canto studies and professional bodywork practice with the disciplines of Mabel Todd, Joseph Pilates, Moshe Feldenkrais, ballet, modern dance, Eastern dance and yoga. Thus began our studying, performing, collaborating and teaching together. With his guidance, I have gone on to sustained Pilates study, and received additional instruction in Ideokinesis, Feldenkrais, Somatics, Eutony, and many other physical reeducation approaches relevant to the care of the performer’s body. Breath and body being inextricably linked, I have made a deep professional commitment to learn skills for training breath and body simultaneously. Most often, what actually brings them together is the Focus Point. The first thing, then, that is characteristic of my teaching is my emphasis on physical alignment. The second thing characteristic is my attention to related fields. My method of working is inspired by principles gleaned from related fields that can inform the voice work, drawing parallels between disciplines which can enrich the inquiry into effective use of the voice. For example, I teach text analysis using musical principles, acting using painting principles, and stage movement using choreographic principles. Sometimes, however, this approach ends up highlighting the differences between disciplines rather than their relatedness. For example, "jaw tension" doesn't always mean the same thing to the dentist and to the singer; "inhale" doesn’t always mean the same thing for the bel canto singer and the yoga practitioner. But one principle that I have found common to public speaking, singing, dancing and acting—and therefore emphasize in my teaching--is the Focus Point. At my students’ request, 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 dancer Dame Margot Fonteyn, singer Feodor Chaliapin and actor Sir John Gielgud focused when they worked. 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 at, 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 where to focus their attention . 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? Paradoxically, this was a speaker with a Focus Point. Note that in the matter of looking or not looking at the audience, there are a wide range of opinions available to a student to choose from, all expressed by talented professionals. At one end of the spectrum, you can find teachers who recommend looking directly into the audience, even singling out individuals to address directly. At the other end of the spectrum, you can find teachers who suggest that you not address anyone in particular. For my part, in the context of dramatic material for theatrical production or audition, I am entirely at the latter end of the spectrum. In my experience, 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. The important thing is to experiment until you find what gives you a consistent sense that there is 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. Also, some plays require you to help create the illusion that there is a "fourth wall" between you and the audience; in such cases you will need to stay aware of both Focus Point AND fourth wall. Sometimes you will create the illusion that there is a fourth wall by turning your back to the audience. When you do this, you stay connected to the audience if you 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 stationery 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!
	As for the children's opera, I saw all of these practical ideas at work last summer. It was inspiring to see skills from my own early training making such a contribution forty years later. Sure enough, Sanford Jones used the large taped Xs on the back wall in every aspect of what happened over the next weeks. At the opening of each rehearsal, the Xs were an important part of the warm-up: the noisy children were led through a sequence of prompts, simply to look first at one X, then at another and another. "See what you know is there," he urged them. They fell quiet, engaged by looking and imagining. In singing rehearsal, Jones would remind them, "The key to the singer’s success is the focus of his eyes." And during performance, this turned out to be the case. When a young performer faltered, Jones would gesture gently towards the big center X from the piano where he conducted, and instantly the performance would teeter back on track. During the same period that the children’s opera was in preparation at the theatre, I taught a lovely young woman named Emily Millot how to use the Focus Point in my studio. A violin prodigy at five, she can trace her musical lineage to Heifetz; at age 11, she debuted with the New Orleans Philharmonic. Nevertheless, her breathing and alignment have posed problems for her as her career has developed. She was very unsure of herself when we began experimenting with the Focus Point. Once she found it, however, her whole body released, her breathing lowered and slowed, her face opened and lit up. "That feels perfect," she said. And that experience was deeply expressed in her playing. Connecting the feeling she had with the expressivity I heard is, of course, the focus--the point--of the Focus Point.
	Citation: Title: The Voice in Violence and other contemporary issues in professional voice and speech training presented by the Voice and Speech Review Editor: Dal Vera, Rocco Date: 2001 ISBN: 1-55783-497-0 Publisher: Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Incorporated Distributor: Applause Books/Hal Leonard Corporation Description: The official journal of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association containing 55 articles on a wide variety of issues in professional voice and speech use and training, many centered on the topic of vocal use in staged violence. 331 pages, 8.5" x 11", paperback.
	© 2001 Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Inc.