ABSTRACT
Time seems to slow to a crawl and stop when you are listening to a dull speaker. A short lecture given in a monotone can appear to last for hours rather than a few minutes.
Conversely, a good speaker who varies his or her inflection and pacing can make a long speech fly by and leave the audience wanting more. I once auditioned an actress for a narrator’s role in a film I was directing. Since I wanted the character to have a sexy voice but didn’t want the actress’ choice of material to influence my decision, I requested that she read distinctly ‘un-sexy’ material for the audition. The actress found an extremely dull exterminator’s treatise on the life cycle of the bedbug and declaimed it in a breathy, Marilyn Monroestyle voice that reduced the crew to hysterics. She got the part.
