Find an empty room and imagine three points you might look at as an actor, one in front of you, one to your left and one to your right. Stand still facing the front point and speak a line or two. Turn and look directly at your point to the left. Repeat the line or two. Now turn to your point on the right and perform them again. This is an example of how the eye-line can inform body language and even how a character speaks.
Stage focus means where the focus of your eyes and your attention is, to another person on stage, a prop, to somewhere imagined, or something related to the words you have learned and memorised. The audience doesn’t actually have to see the object. They just need to see that you have been paying attention to it. The actor will be more believable when you can see what has your attention, even if it is a non-visible or imaginary person, object or location.
The focus of your eyes shouldn’t just move randomly all over the place and make the person you are playing very hard for the audience to see. The eyes shouldn’t drop to the floor as the words are being thought, scan around the audience to give reassurance or move back and forth at every pause in the line. If you want to avoid this, decide where each focus should be within a scene. It might be your scene partner, a door, or an object that your character might be holding.
If you look up, down or across to someone you can’t see on stage it will affect the physicality of your body. Looking down means your head, shoulders and chest can close, which means your voice will lose some of the direction towards the listener. If the eyes look too high it can create tension in the throat. Looking at an imaginary person, the focus should be at the height where their eyes would be. This will free the body to breathe and be able to say their lines to them. By knowing that you are speaking to a place and person, and the body is positioned to do so, there is less likelihood that your delivery will sound lost and your voice can be projected clearly and directed.
Focus during a conversation doesn’t mean you shouldn’t break your gaze for any reason. You may look to the floor or away for a second while you consider a response to a difficult or surprising question, or you might look at your scene partner after a decision has been reached and then look away if your attention has shifted somewhere, perhaps a door, because that was your original intention. The eye-line should move according to the flow of the scene not as a distraction. The movement should make sense. A glance away becomes meaningful when it is based upon reaction or subtext. If you are blocking a scene with your partner, the move of the eye line is determined by where it should be.
Film a scene or a monologue with the camera as far away as you can get it. Turn your head and look at something on stage (if possible) or use another point in the room. Watch yourself back without any sound and notice the movement of your eyes. Are you moving them around a bit or can you follow where they rest upon? Do they move at the correct moment when something else occurs during the piece? Are the looks exaggerated or very little? You can now decide what works best for you in relation to your focus points.
You don’t want to be moving your focus point around as a distraction, you want a clear idea of where the person you are playing is looking at a particular time, and if you want to see where someone else enters to. Look closely at your movements. Is the movement of your body following your eye line and does it have purpose when it moves? If the audience cannot tell where your attention goes, an empty space becomes just that. When it is clear where your character looks, even the empty spaces come alive on stage.