(That’s a total of five minutes, including introductions, commentary, tuning a guitar, and / or fumbling with the mike.)
| How to determine the duration of one’s program? |
| Practice it! |
| Time it! |
| It’s what the professionals do. Why not me and you? |
We give some ideas for how to keep to five minutes further below. But first, some self-righteous (and possibly hypocritical) moralizing:
Our only aesthetic requirement is FIVE MINUTES. We do not censor or edit for content (see note at end).
The currency of an open mike is time in peoples’ lives. Please do not abuse that currency by going longer than five minutes. We barter time: you get to be listened to for five minutes and in return, you agree to listen to everyone else. By limiting ourselves to five minutes, we do not force each other to endure abuse of this contract.
If, after the above moralizing, you still believe that your art is so stunningly beautiful that it deserves more than five minutes, say ten minutes or an hour, please still limit yourself to five minutes.
If you go longer than five minutes, here is what happens:
- others take it to mean that they too can go long (which can be horrifying)
- everyone senses, at about five minutes and ten seconds, that you have gone too long
- everyone assumes you have made a deliberate choice to go too long, even if you are cluelessly unconscious of the time you are taking
- everyone in the room switches from loving the beauty of your work to resenting the hell out of your abuse of their time
- what might have been a roaring ovation comes out as tepidly, no, limply polite clapping
Rules of thumb:
5 minutes = 350 words (approximately 5 rushed sonnets, 4 properly paced sonnets, 2 pages of iambic pentameter, or 1 page of prose – include intros and comments in your word count)
5 minutes = 1 song (Not 2 short songs. That never works.)
But, really, do not go by these rules of thumb. You owe it to your audience to practice while running a stop watch: know your times.
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Here is a useful list of guidelines for making sure a reading goes well: Why Most Readings Suck And How To Fix It (including the wonderful phrase, “Time is a thing, fuckface”).
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Time-limit enforcement: For all the aggressive growling on this page, we do not give anyone the hook. You are on your honor to keep it to five minutes or less. If you notice, at the end of your performance, that the applause is a little tepid, you can conclude one of two things: 1) you went over five minutes, or, 2) it felt to the audience like you went over five minutes. Either way, you will need to work on your showpersonship.
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Hate Speech, Abusive Speech, Offensive Content: We do not censor or edit for content. However, we promise that we will not protect you from angry reactions to any hate speech you might be foolish enough to bring. In fact, we strongly support those who are affected or offended by destructive content to speak up in opposition. We will not shut down your voice, but we will raise our voices in chorus with those who may need to speak out against harmful things you may have brought to our microphone.