EyeActing

Hi! Welcome to the Mikroteater

and the beautiful Chat Noir.

And right now,

it’s all happening at a theater,

because, people,
we're going to an audition!

Follow me, and follow
the arrows, to the audition.

Let's go.

For the last 6 or 7 years,

I've been developing
a new acting technique.

And I've simply called it "EyeActing."

It's based on the concept that
where you look in a room

affects how you feel.

OK, do you have sound?

Not yet.

Let me see. There.

Now you have sound.

You can put this there.

It turns out that through new research,
and neurology,

it turns out that where you look

in a room affects how you feel.

In other words, your gaze

has a direct connection
to your subconscious.

Tell me a little bit about Vera.

Vera is,

she is a girl who

hasn't had it easy growing up.

And together with five other girls,
she has found herself a pack.

She lives

outside of normal society.

She's pretty young.

When you talk about Vera now,

can you feel her anywhere in your body?

In my mouth,

- Yes, good.
- Here, very much.

In your cheeks?

Yes. Almost like I can't open my mouth.

That's good.

Now if you look at the line,

a horizontal line
starting at the windows over there.

Can you feel Vera

strongest gazing to your left?

Or in the middle?

Or can you feel Vera

when you gaze to your right side?

On my left.

On your left?

Do you have an area, or a point?

I have an area.

You have an area.

When we work with EyeActing,
it's helpful to use

something called bilateral music.

It’s a kind of music
that we listen to with earphones.

And it alternates
between the left and right ear,

and it helps the actor concentrate.

When working on a scene,

you always start with the body,
finding a point

on what I call the line —
the horizon in your field of vision.

Then, you find the point
that corresponds to

how you feel in your body,

and this activates the subconscious.

Slowly, you shift your focus
from the conscious to the subconscious,

and this allows the subconscious

to bring forth both emotions
and physical behavior

sometimes you can see that actor
undergo a total physical transformation.

How old are you?

- 15.
- 15?

How is that?

It's okay.

It's okay to be 15?

No.

No?

No.

Tell me?

- No.
- Tell me.

No. I don’t want to talk about it.

You don't want to tell me?

Where do you feel being 15 in your body?

In your cheek?

- My jaw.
- In your jaw?

Could you see if you could find
that point on the line

that corresponds to
how you feel it in your jaw?

I think it’s here.

You think it’s there? Okay.

Do you have the point or just the area?

I have the point.

You have the point. Yes. Good.

I think so.

Yes, that's good.

Great.

What do you feel?

I feel nauseous, and angry.

You’re nausesous and angry?

Where are you nauseous and angry, Vera?

All over.

All over?

All over me.

All over you?

Yes. Okay.

The most intriguing aspect of EyeActing

is its organic nature

and the direct engagement
with the subconscious,

revealing something
that is truly skinless.

It's very vulnerable.

When there was no one inside,
we went in.

Klara approached the man
behind the counter

and asked for some cigarettes.

When he turned around,
we threw ourselves at him,

me and Klara, we put a knife to his eye,

and we took all the money
in the cash register,

and some from the safe.

And then we ran out.

Okay.

You want to take your headphones off?

Just a response,
just an impulsive response.

You don't have to
think much about it, or be smart

or make it academic in anyway.

Can you just...

Exciting, new, different, strange.

Overwhelming.

It was an extreme force,
and I still feel it.

I still feel it.

But do you think this is
deeper than the Method?

Yes. It really gets into your muscle.

I can't explain it any other way.

I don’t know if you could feel
when you got into being 15 years old

you became very obstinate.

Oh fuck.

Could you feel that?

We could hear it.

- What?
- I could hear it.

You answered a bit rudely and...

She was rude and it was perfectly fine.

There was no problem.

but, “No, I don’t want to,”

“No, I don’t want to talk about it,”

“No, I didn’t want to go there."

- Did you feel that?
- Yes.

Do you remember?
Do you have a sense of doing that?

Yes, I remember. And I remember
how surprised I was at my own answer.

Then again it was a little bit like,

the best I can explain it is
muscle memory, like, I don’t care.

I won't take this.

This attitude just came up -

pretend you don't care.

Right, right.

Why should I waste my time on this.

- No?
- Yes.

The big difference between EyeActing
and traditional Stanislavsky techniques

I believe, is working on
what we call the analysis.

We're used to doing
the analysis beforehand,

usually sitting around a table
before we get up on our feet.

The challenge with that is
when we work on the analysis,

we're using the cognitive
part of our brain,

the upper part responsible
for thoughts and words.

But what EyeActing does

is to go directly to the subconscious.

The subconscious then

sends electrical signals

back up to the cognitive part,
which are then expressed theatrically.

In other words,
when you work with the analysis,

you're moving in the wrong direction

compared to the flow
of electrical signals in the brain.

This is why I believe
there are a lot of actors

who find it difficult to transition
from working on the analysis

into being in the zone.

What I call the "flow zone"
is the condition when the actor

is just living on the stage.

Yes, yes, very exciting.

It was almost a coincidence

that I stumbled upon this technique.

Because I had heard
about a workshop in Oslo

centered around a groundbreaking
new treatment method.

And during the break, I started talking
with the workshop leader, David Grand.

David Grand had developed
the Brainspotting technique,

which is a treatment method.

When he heard that I worked
with theater and acting training,

he became quite excited

and said, "You have to remember
that this technique

can also bring out
characters from inside of us.”

Wow, that’s exciting!

What Brainspotting does is
it accesses the parts of the brain

that go into character immediately.

You don't have to have all the experiences
a character has had to use Brainspotting.

We have a vivid ability to imagine.

We have mirroring neurons that are active,

and they can be activated even more
if we can feel it in our bodies.

If we can feel the experience in our body,
we get an even deeper access

to these experiences
when we use Brainspotting.

Understanding Brainspotting
as a method of acting coaching

you need to know
what it does in the brain.

And just a quick brain education,

the top part of the brain which is
the human brain, only humans have it,

is called the neocortex.

Underneath it is the mammalian brain
and the reptilian brain.

And we call it the sub cortex.

Language and thought is up here.

Emotion and intuition and
and body experience is down here.

Brainspotting uses eye positions.

We really look for
relevant eye positions in a person.

So when the actor finds that spot

and all of a sudden, "Wow,
I'm right there,"

and they start to drop down

and they start to
have character memory come up

and they feel it in their body
and they feel it emotionally.

It's very active,

but it also feels very safe
to the actor.

When the actor finds that spot,
they're home.

Now it’s getting down here.

Yes.

- Yes.
- Now it's gone.

Yes.

There's something here.

When you told me

that you were developing
a new acting technique,

my jaw dropped because
it's not every day you get to talk to

someone who is creating
a new acting technique.

Let's see, Lars Erik,

if we can find a spot on the line

that corresponds to

where in your body you can feel Henrik.

Shall we try that?

If you look at this,

do you think it's

on your right side?

Or do you think it's in the middle?

- Anna?
- Yes, honey.

I would like for us to …

What would you like?

When we get married,

can we let

old vicar Samuel Gransjø marry us?

Hmmm...

Yes.

- Yes.
- Yes, we can if you want.

Here.

Here?

Yes, here.

Just you and me and the vicar
and two witnesses

and nobody else.

There were two aspects in particular

that were very exciting to discover.

Firstly, there was a point that I found,

and I know where it is.
When I look at it now,

I can immediately feel that it affects me.

It's not easy looking at it.

Now I look away again
because it goes right in.

Just placing my eyes there,

which is a tool that I can use

when I go out on stage.

If I'm looking for something,
vulnerability, pain,

with another person,
I can touch that point

and I can find exactly
what I need in that scene.

I'm just noticing it now as I sit here,

that looking at that point
costs me dearly.

But it's good to be able to do it.

To be able to turn that switch on there,

and it takes a microsecond.

And then it happens.

Very exciting.

We have to live here.

This is where we're supposed to live.

Isn't it better to start our new life
in this unfinished church?

Instead of in goddamn Uppsala!

I’ll tell you what I understand, Henrik.

You don’t like my family.

You want to humiliate my mother
as best as you can.

You want to show them your power.
Anna follows me.

She doesn’t care about you anymore.

- No, that's not it.
- Yes.

- No.
- Yes.

Yes, you want to hurt them

in a humiliating and refined way,
and you’re doing it very well.

I don’t understand
how you can be that damn wrong.

I wanted to feel this for myself,

in my body,

and this was not just for me alone
and my own curiosity

but also to investigate
whether perhaps this could be

a supplement to what I teach
at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

In 2019,

I was in contact
with the Norwegian Mikroteater.

And they wanted to stage a play
called Venus in Fur.

And they asked if I wanted to join them.

And this is a 2-character play.

I thought I'll ask them if they would be
interested in working with EyeActing.

Can you say something
about Wanda, Vanessa.

Wanda is

about 46 years old.

Yes.

She has been an actress
without much success.

Yes.

But she's tough.

She’s tough, yeah.

Let's see if we can
find Wanda on the line somewhere.

Shall we do that?

Then you need to look at this,

follow this.

Do you think Wanda's on your right?

Is Wanda in the middle –

Left.

What I found very interesting
was that I felt,

and I think this may be expected,
is that you move away from

the intellectualization
of the approach to the role.

And I thought, in a strange way,

that we saw that.

In the small attempts that we made,
it was like –

it was a little out of control,
in a positive way.

Knock, knock, knock.

Am I too late?

I'm too late.

Fuck.

But you let your body take over,
the immediate,

the intuitive, it takes over.

Then you remove yourself from all that.

If you're here
for the Venus in Fur audition,

everyone went home half an hour ago.

The subway was stuck,
and then my phone died.

We know enough to want to do this,
but we have no idea

where we'll land, and this makes it
very exciting.

We've got some very exciting weeks
ahead of us.

And then you had it on.

After a few days of rehearsals
Peder and I

discovered that we had different views
on the character of Thomas.

While I saw Thomas as a pleasant,

inexperienced and
somewhat frustrated theater director,

Peder thought that he
was closer to my personality,

and that he was older,
and very frustrated

with the commercial theater,

and that this had to come out.

We had one session where we
had to brainspot the need.

It was clever because it was just like...

I saw some stuff flowing out of Øyvind
that was the character.

It was very exciting,
but it was also quite hard.

I didn't really like the fact that it was
going to be so difficult to talk to Øyvind

until I realized that
he might not be here, or where is he?

But then, a character started developing

from that session,
which we have referred to in further work.

Welcome to the Mikroteater.

And right now, it’s all happening
at a theater, because, people,

we're going to an audition!

Follow me, and follow the arrows,
to the audition.

Let’s go.

Yeah, but listen, honey,

in the novel, Wanda is 24.

Back then,
a woman of 24 would have been married,

had five children, and tuberculosis.

What we Brainspotters or body-oriented
therapists say about the technique

is that the ego takes a holiday,

so that the self is allowed to work.

When you do Brainspotting,

or other body-oriented
bottom-up techniques,

you don't have the observing
part of you that present,

assessing whether
what you're doing is good or bad.

You just are.

And then you can go back to your chair.

In character.

Then, start writing in your diary.

Hello, write something then.

I am.

Say it out loud.

This is theater. Say it out loud
or no one gets what you're doing.

Okay, it's the beginning of the play,

the lights go up,

and all we hear is
the sound of an old clock

saying tick tock, tick tock.

October 22, 1870.

It is two minutes past two in the morning,

and I am standing by a spring
surrounded by bushes and thickets.

There is no moon tonight,
only silence and darkness.

No, wait.

I can hear a sparrow.

A nightingale.

Yes, a nightingale.

And the moan of a male cat in heat.

It’s about time, you know?

We've been using methods
that are 120 years old,

so it's about time that acting techniques
are also updated to the 21st Century.