Charlotte, I'll let you know when I am California bound, it won't be long. My first experience of addressing a big audience came when I was twelve. Palm Sunday, the Passion according to St. Matthew, twelve minutes. My dad was chief lector for St. Joseph's, but he had laryngitis, and he could barely croak. So he whispered to the priests, "Let Timmy do it." The following year the priests asked me to do The Long Gospel of St. John at the Good Friday Solemnity, fourteen minutes.
I no longer need the peach crate required to lift a little boy to the microphone. I no longer need the microphone to fill a church with sound. But mics are tricky. It's all a matter of testing them, and having a good auditor, in the old sense, give you the necessary feedback. If you're blowing out the speakers with your plosives, stand back. That's why I am often eighteen inches out. Most women must be within six inches. Fact.
Most important thing, which I overlooked in my previous post, is learn to breathe. Not by the throat, but by your diaphragm. A little yoga will teach you this. If you draw in your breath from your belly, you can go forever, if you breathe through your throat you're gasping in ten seconds. The forever gives you time to cast a glance at the text, prememorize it as it is unscrolling, and nobody in the audience knows how hard you are working.
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