This past Thursday night was The Moth GrandSLAM event at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. People gathered excitedly for a night of storytelling and to find out who the winner would be.
The Moth sets up events for people to tell stories which touch upon a specific theme. The smaller events, the StorySLAMs, consist of randomly selected audience members to recount, in the span of 5-7 minutes, a true event which happened to them based on the theme of the night. Other audience members are chosen as judges and give each storyteller a score in order to determine the winner. After enough of these StorySLAMs in an area, the winners compete amongst themselves in a GrandSLAM event to determine another, final winner. Thursday was the GrandSLAM event for Boston.
The theater itself is beautiful, with gold statues, rich colors, and pretty lighting. The stage was pitch black, except for a single white spotlight on the microphone which the storytellers would be using. As someone who had never been to a Moth StorySLAM let alone the GrandSLAM, I had no idea what to expect. I had listened to the recorded stories from The Moth’s website, but had never experienced its live, in-the-moment storytelling. While waiting for the event to begin, I heard a woman excitedly say to her friend, “The Moth finals, that’s a big deal!”
The show was intended to start at 8:00 pm, but started slightly later which only made the audience’s anticipation grow, not to mention the 80’s pump-up music they played in the background. Once the lights finally dimmed and we knew the night was officially starting, the storytellers took over and brought us on a journey through their eyes. The theme for the night was “Big Breaks” and they were free to interpret that however they wanted. Some saw it as a golden opportunity they were given, whether that be a job or someone specific who helped them. Others saw it as breaking free from someone or something which previously held them back.
If it were not for the common theme, it wouldn’t be apparent how each story connected. One storyteller, Dawn Smith, recounted her first big break from the cult she grew up in, and her subsequent departure from it in later years. Another storyteller, Arestia Rosenberg told her story of trying to make it big in Hollywood… as an assistant to one of the CEOs of a major motion picture company.
The winning story came from Amanda Gorman, who told the story of auditioning for the part of young Nala for “The Lion King” on Broadway. She brought her story to life, even walking on her hands at one point, and illustrated her story in a way which made the audience feel the anxiety of auditioning and the disappointment of not getting the role with her.
The power of live storytelling was clear this past Thursday, and leaving the theater, I was amazed by the experience and talent I had just witnessed.