The Moth Mainstage

March 11, 2016

Storytelling for Everyone

The Moth Mainstage is a non-scripted, but carefully constructed, show all about true stories — true stories told live, onstage and without prompters or notes. At each performance, a selection of curated storytellers from all walks of life share their personal vignettes uniting under one theme.

The Moth Mainstage originated in New York and Los Angeles, and for their upcoming northern Michigan show, their performers will be equally divided between nationally known tale-tellers and Michigan yarn-spinners, all of them exploring the theme of “The Ties That Bind.”

UNCONVENTIONAL SHOWS

Directed by Catherine McCarthy, the Traverse City performance of The Moth Mainstage will be hosted by David Crabb, an author, comedian and storyteller from Los Angeles, who is also the host and co-producer of the Audible.com “Stories in Session” series.

“David is a fantastic storyteller in his own right,” McCarthy said, “but what’s also interesting is that the Moth’s storytellers aren’t all professional artists, so the barrier between audience and performer is much less defined at a Moth show than other theatrical performances.”

COMPLICATED LIVES

Each storyteller works with a Moth director, in this case McCarthy, who helps him/ her prepare an individual story for the stage show.

“It can be very hard to take a life experience and turn it into a coherent 10-minute story,” she explained. “Life is complicated and it can be difficult to decide how to shape it into a cohesive narrative.”

In addition to utilizing each story’s natural theme to expand it for live performance, the overall theme of each show plays a part in finding the threads that tie the stories together.

“It’s about building vivid scenes that help the audience feel like they’re really being taken into someone’s personal experience,” McCarthy added.

DIVERSE CAST

Five storytellers will join Crabb on stage in Traverse City, each interesting in their own way: Shannon Cason, a writer from Detroit who hosts his own storytelling podcast called “Homemade Stories”; Eddie Hejka, a longtime Detroit resident, a special education teacher and local union president, and one of 11 siblings who’s now a family man of his own; Sister Mary Navarre, half Irish and half French, an educator and current archivist of the Dominican Sisters; Sofija Stefanovic, a Serbian-Australian writer living in New York; and Dame Wilburn, a marketing director for a soap company.

SHARING TIME

“What I love about this show is how wildly divergent the stories are,” McCarthy said. “Without giving too much away, this show will feature everything from an ethical neighborhood dilemma to a nun’s journey, online hacking to a family curse.”

Stories, she added, are perhaps the most ordinary and universal art form.

“We all tell stories,” she pointed out.

The Moth Mainstage’s stories aren’t considered monologues or performance pieces, but instead, conversations that bind.

“The experience of attending a Moth show is more like listening to friends sharing stories around the dinner table,” she said.

“We hope that, in some way, by elevating this simple art form to a stage, we’re allowing people to come away with a new appreciation of other people’s lived experiences, and perhaps a desire to share their own stories.”

The Moth Mainstage will perform at the City Opera House in Traverse City on Friday, Mar. 18 at 8pm. For tickets and more information, visit cityoperahouse.org or call (231) 941-8082.