Tuesday, July 14, 2009

WANDERING EYES--eye contact:part three

When I was in fifth grade, the nuns warned us of "wandering eyes" when taking tests. One used to say: "If they wander, you're a goner!" And let me tell you, some of those sisters meant what they said!

Later, in the eighth grade, as we matured physically and as some of our hormones kicked in, "wandering eyes" meant an entirely different thing--but with the same outcome, as far as the sisters were concerned!

Wandering eyes are also the bane, the achilles heel of many speakers. Some of us want to look at so many people at once that our eyes are like butterflies, flitting here and there, non stop, with no rhyme or reason. Some of us are just inherently jumpy, and  our eyes just jump along with the errant and erratic--certainly unplanned--head movement. Some of us rotate our heads smoothly, slowly, and evenly from left to right and then back again, our eyes simply a part of a mindless mechanistic tendency to pan the audience. And some of us can't look at others eyes at all, and therefore avert to the floor, wall, or ceiling.

A number of us are cool with direct, intense, prolonged eye to eye contact. I'm convinced, on one level, it has a lot to do with how we are raised, how our upbringing and world experience have impacted our confidence levels.

Regardless, we need to control the eye contact, so that it is direct, sustained, caring, nurturing.

So, we can play theatre games to break bad habits and build good ones.

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