By Bob Grove
Whether you are competing in a speech contest or reading to a public audience, the rules are the same. The contents should be well organized, and the delivery done convincingly enough to evoke appreciative audience response.
Anyone can read a printed page, but performance reading is an oral presentation enhanced by gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, costume, voices and dialects, music, sound effects, props and audience interaction. In other words, you’re an actor.
Performers don’t merely read lines, they make them sound fresh, like they are being uttered for the first time. Charisma and relevance are two essential traits for effective delivery. An audience is more responsive if they feel involved and can identify with characters. Performance art makes such identification easier: “Joan was a delightful guest – giddy and charming, a pleasure to be with. Her bright eyes sparkled as she asked seductively, ‘Would any of you gentlemen care to dance with me?’
I’m sure you’ve endured church sermons that drone on: “In the Apocrypha and outlined in the Pentateuch, especially the synoptic gospels of John 21:14, Luke 8:16, Mark 11:9 and Matthew 21:7….” Maybe this is why some clergymen have to shout and rant to keep the attention of their audience, or to wake up the parishioners who are nearly comatose in the rearmost pews.
We’ve all had the experience of straining to listen to a reader who mumbles or reads so fast that you can’t keep up. Read at a normal rate as if you were talking to someone; in fact, you are. Your audience came to hear what you have to say, not how fast you can say it. You don’t have to shout, but articulate loudly enough to be heard in the back row.
Readers are entertainers. Your audience expects us to take them away from the humdrum and cares of every day. But performance reading should not be excessively exaggerated unless it’s comedy or if you’re narrating a cartoon. You don’t have to scream, flail your arms or stomp to make a point. Realism is the key. Sometimes it’s difficult, for example when a deep-throated man is quoting a young child or a female character. But it can be done:
Johnny looked up at his father and asked, “When is mommy coming home?”
"Not for a while, son.”
Mrs. Higgins chided her husband for his bad manners: “Charles, put that napkin on your lap.” The character change in vocalization makes its point.
One of the trickiest deliveries is with dialects and foreign accents. The Englishman may say, Good morning, Dear, a German may ask, Was ist los? and a Frenchman may greet you with, Bon jour. But if you can’t imitate the dialect, don’t try to; there’s no substitute for reality.
Bob Grove is a member of NCWN-West.
Now retired after 35 years as founder of Grove Enterprises, an international supplier of radio communications equipment, Bob has more time to write. Most recently, he has published a mystery novella (Secrets of Magnolia Manor), his memoir (Misadventures of an Only Child), a collection of children’s stories (Adventures of Kaylie and Jimmy), and has written several flash fiction stories as well as some forgettable poetry. He has been awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in the Silver Arts literature competition.
Bob’s public readings are popular as a performance art form, typified by his annual December reading, in costume and dialect, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the John C. Campbell Folk School. Visit his website: http://bobgrove.org/
