The Moth, In Person

I've been a longtime fan of The Moth, a storytelling radio show, and after more than

five years in New York I finally got around to going to see a live show on Friday night. (Nothing like waiting until the eve of a big move to do all the cool stuff that's been in your city all along...) The Moth's tagline is "True stories told live without notes" and each of the shows features stories that (supposedly) revolve around a theme. The theme on Friday was "Into the Wild: Stories of Strange Lands" and I figured there would be stories about survival or travel. Instead, however, all of the storytellers seemed to interpret the theme in a rather metaphorical way.

I thought the show started at 6:30, so Ed and I headed to Cooper Union (most of the performances are at the smaller Housing Works bookshop, but this was a special event in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Riverhead Books publishing house and so was in a bigger space) at 6:00 only to discover that the doors opened at 6:30 but the show wasn't until 7:30. We killed time at a Starbucks nearby, which turned out to be a mistake. When we arrived in the large auditorium in the basement of Cooper Union at 7:00, it was impossible to find seats with a good view of the stage. The rows of chairs in the auditorium are interspersed with lots of what I can only assume are load-bearing pillars (they must be functional because having this many pillars in a room with a stage is a terrible idea), and each one blocks the view of everyone lined up behind it. There were plenty of empty seats, but none of them were good ones. We ended up with one seat that just barely offered a view of the microphone and one next to it that looked straight at a pillar. But there was nothing to be done, and I figured that it wouldn't be that terrible since I usually enjoy listening to the stories on the radio.

"View" from the  bad seat. A cellist sat in the white chair, and the microphone that the storytellers used is behind the pillar in the center.

I always enjoy checking out the audience at these kinds of events. People are generally dressed in either very elegant or very eclectic clothes and have conversations you don't usually hear in other venues. They discuss books, politics, science, and classical music. As we were waiting for the show to begin, I tuned into a conversation behind me just in time to hear a man say, "Well, a society always gets the government it deserves."

Author Sarah Vowell, who is a new hero of mine, hosted the show. She is a short, squeaky-voiced author with some of the most genius comedic timing I've ever encountered, and I've already ordered one of her books. She had everyone in stitches with her frank, deadpan introduction. All of the storytellers were authors as well, though I'd only heard of two of them before. The first up was Meg Wolitzer. As she was getting taking the stage, I noticed that the seat to my left, which was being reserved by the guy on the other side of it, was still empty. I asked whether he was waiting for someone and he said that he was but agreed to let Ed and me move over one seat each until his friend arrived. As it turned out, his friend never came, which was a tremendous stroke of luck. We were both able to see all of the storytellers, and though none of them was particularly physically expressive, it was great fun to watch them anyway.

We listened to stories by Meg Wolitzer (someone whose books I've never read because they sound too fluffy, though I may need to re-evaluate based on her funny, poignant coming-of-age story), Jon Ronson, James McBride (author of the well-known The Color of Water and recent winner of the National Book Award), Maile Meloy, and Marlon James. It was tough to pick a favorite story at the time, but now that a few days have passed I think Marlon James's story of self-discovery in his native Jamaica has stayed with me most, with McBride's story taking a close second. None of the stories had much to do with the theme, as far as I could tell, but they were great anyway.

I really enjoyed the show. Moth events take place all over the country and it would certainly be worth attending one. But those who live in smaller towns without performances can rest assured that they're not missing too much. The stories are almost as enjoyable to listen to on the radio as they are to see, and thanks to The Moth website and podcast, they're available on demand.