On a warm September evening as traffic slowed and the sun descended, story-seekers trickled into the Balzer Theater in Midtown for an event hosted by the Moth. On a wooden stage, two tables — one for the emcee and scorekeeper and the other for the audio technician — sat on opposite ends of the platform. At center stage, the spotlight shone on a lone microphone. The rest of the theater was dimmed to a hushed darkness.
The premise of The Moth is simple: people go up on stage and tell a five-minute story without any notes to a live audience.
To enter, aspiring participants sign a release form and toss it into what the emcee calls a “hat” but what is really a cloth shopping bag. The emcee draws a name from the hat (bag), and the first speaker tells a story aligned with the event’s theme. Each speaker then draws the next name until ten stories are told. There is no audition and no advance screening, because the Moth believes that “everyone has a story to tell.”
But it is not obvious who is inclined to take the stage. In the lobby before the show, a young man in skinny jeans and black-rimmed glasses scribbled on a spiral notepad and murmured to himself, the signs of revision and rehearsal. He did not enter his name. During the show, a middle-aged lady leaned her head against her beaux for most of the evening, as if on a relaxing date night out. No way she submitted an entry. But her name was drawn, and she stormed the stage and performed with frenetic energy.
After each story, three sets of judges raise their scores. The judges are drawn from the crowd. Those who judge are not allowed to tell stories that night and neither are their friends or family members (or enemies). Otherwise, no credentials are required — only an enthusiastic hand raise. It is unclear what standard the judges apply.
Thus, aspiring storytellers do not know if they will be picked nor in which order they might be called. They have to remember and deliver a compelling story if their name is drawn. They need to be vulnerable to a crowd they hardly know (by a show of hands, half the people in the audience were first-time attendees). And storytellers have to appeal to judges whose preferences are a mystery.
But contestants face a friendly audience. The crowd whooped, gasped, sighed, clapped and cheered with the rise and fall of each story. No booing was allowed. After each story, the emcee, Jon Greene, an Emmy-nominated author, poet and playwright, hollered, “Give it up for that storytella!”
Storytellers, judges, attendees, the staff — everyone has a role in this communal effort. This seems by design. The Moth is the brainchild of novelist George Dawes Green, a Georgia native who sought to recreate the experience of swapping yarns on a friend’s porch, as moths fluttered around the lights. In 1997, Greene held the first Moth event in his New York City living room. Since then, The Moth has spun out to 28 cities, including Los Angeles, Boston and London. It has broadcasted more than 50,000 stories by novelists, actors, poets, Nobel prize winners and plebeians alike across many platforms, including open-mics, a podcast and the Peabody Award-winning Moth Radio Hour.
On this night, a nurse, a husband, a consultant and a Tech Ph.D. student, among others, took the stage. In between sets, the emcee read amusing anecdotes off strips of paper, which had been submitted anonymously by audience members. These punctuations gave the judges time to contemplate their scores.
The nurse shared her struggles with anxiety during COVID-19. The husband recounted the time he should have kept his mouth closed. The consultant admitted that she felt jealous towards millennial job seekers. The tone of the stories reverberated with vulnerability, self-deprecation and the occasional triumph. As the sun set and the street lights flickered on, the scores increased, with the last storyteller winning it all.
Even if the judging is subjective, The Moth believes that storytellers can improve their craft. This year, The Moth published the book, “How to Tell a Story.” According to the volume, a story should include a beginning, middle, end and some stakes. A story should not be a sermon, a TED talk or a comedy routine, which is ironic, because The Moth show felt like a mixture between a church service, a lecture and a comedy club.
The storytellers may seem like the stars of the show. The winner of this open mic is invited to participate in a GrandSLAM competition with bigger crowds in a larger theater.
But as the people flowed out, both storytellers and judges merged into the crowd. Writers and spectators folded into the same mass. There is no backstage with studio chairs and Dasani water where the celebrities cool down. No Q&A, no TV interviews, no afterparty. There is only the teller and the listener both walking into the cool night air, both armed with a memorable evening and a deeper understanding of the human condition, whether they stood in the spotlight or not. Because everyone has a story to tell.