On Being as Big as You Need to Be

I was multi-tasking yesterday–eating breakfast, reading the newspaper, and listening to my local NPR station–when I heard familiar words. Oh, that was me I was listening to, reading an essay I'd written last fall and recorded at the station a few months ago. Although I had an e-mail afterward from the station asking when I could record a couple more essays, and another e-mail complimenting me on the essay's content and my "clear, beautiful voice," it wasn't a great performance.

Which is always a learning experience. Why wasn't it a 10? After I heard the playback at the recording session, I realized that I hadn't connected fully with my imaginary audience on the other side of the microphone. I had confined my energy to the tiny recording studio. I thought I had learned that lesson 50 years ago.

I didn't remember, until I began this posting, that just prior to recording I had spent 4 hours answering phones for the station's spring fund drive. And using my energy to shield myself for 4 hours from the woman across the table from me, one of the most socially inept–or actively obnoxious, take your pick–women I've ever met.

Lesson learned. Again.      

Even the Best

I recently attended a performance by a well-known radio personality that was irritating as hell. My party was seated in the balcony. The performer was positioned so far forward on the stage that we either had to assume a partial-standing position so we could see him, or close our eyes and pretend we were listening to him on the radio. You can imagine what happens when, at my age, I close my eyes.

My host at the event became so angry that he vowed to complain to theatre management. How could they, in all conscience, cut off the sight lines of an entire portion of a paying audience?

But I had seen this performer a decade ago at the 92d St. Y in New York, where I could see him clearly, and where, even though a decade younger, I fell asleep at least twice.

The first time, I assigned blame for my snooze problem on his material, which wasn’t that interesting. But at this performance, he had great material, and his delivery–the ebb and flow of tension and release, the timing–could have served as a “how-to” course for any public speaker. And yet, there I was, off in dreamland again.

Inconceivable as it seems, even to me, this performer has not learned, after decades on stage, the difference between the energy required for a radio audience and a live audience.

Radio requires intimacy. The performer’s energy is concentrated through the mike to a virtual audience of one person or one family, listening in car or a living room. Very different from a three-balcony theatre where, even though one is using a microphone, the energy has to expand to include everyone.