“One of the hottest events in town… The Moth is an evening of unashamedly old-fashioned storytelling…the performances are enthralling, funny and moving, with a typical New York intensity.”
- The Times (London)
Friday was the first local attempt to host The Moth in Iowa City. Chris Mortenson, a third-year graduate student in Photography, organized the event at Public Space One.
For the uninitiated, The Moth is a weekly, hour-long radio show broadcast on some National Public Radio affiliates. Since the inception and tremendous popularity of This American Life, nonfiction radio has experienced what may be its biggest resurgence since the advent of television.
The inaugural Iowa City Moth Night was a success in the eyes of its co-organizers and all of the attendees I spoke with. Five people told stories, including Josh Eklow and I from Intermedia Workshop, and approximately twenty-five people attended. The audience felt receptive to the stories, which ranged from funny college anecdotes to bittersweet personal revelations.
[image-Google search: storytelling]
The Moth’s format—people submitting their name to a pool from which storytellers will be randomly selected to tell 5-minute stories around a loose theme—is really inviting. Some participants are writers or experienced monologists while others are people who don’t work in the language arts and are not accustomed to formal storytelling. This variety makes the content far more interesting than a group made up of people from one field. The event has the potential to bring together people from truly disparate backgrounds and establish a unique level of intimacy.
The Moth’s mission statement is encouraging:
The Moth is dedicated to promoting the art of storytelling. We celebrate the ability of stories to honor the diversity and commonality of human experience, and to satisfy a vital human need for connection. We do so by helping our storytellers to shape their stories and to share them with the community at large. One goal of The Moth is to present the finest storytellers among established and emerging writers, performers and artists; another is to encourage storytelling among populations whose stories often go unheard.”
The last sentence, in particular, is refreshing. Living in a UNESCO City of Literature sometimes has an unfortunate effect on literary events--people take themselves too seriously! I can’t count how many times I’ve left Iowa City readings in disgust at the stuffiness. The Moth, however, has the potential to buck this trend and create a challenging, supportive and FUN storytelling event each month. All in all, The Moth Iowa City is off to an auspicious start.
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