The remote has pretty good range, so feel free to walk around, but maybe test it out at your house/dorm/room/barn first so you can get a feel for the range and obstructions and the like.
If you aren't cool with walking around, then look into using the Presenter mode for keynote. This will let you do things with your MacBook while the presentation runs on the main screen. Meaning, if you follow the actual rules of Presenting, and only have bullet points on your slides as opposed to books, then you can have all the notes on your MacBook's screen. It will also give you a timer, and prompts that you can set up.