. . .
Some in the crowd could easily be mistaken for the occupiers camped out a few blocks away, with their thick-rimmed glasses and their hip T-shirts advertising obscure bands you’ve probably never heard of. But in this same group stands a woman in her mid-forties, dressed fashionably in black and looking like she might have just stepped out of a nearby boutique.
The passerby gives this woman in particular a peculiar look. She is talking under her breath and making hand gestures to no one in particular, holding handwritten notes in one hand and her iPhone in another as a five-minute timer ticks away on the phone’s screen.“No, it’s The Moth,” a girl in line answers. The man turns to the girl and furrows his brow in confusion. “A public storytelling event,” she explains.
“Huh.” The man gives a slight shrug and turns away into the night, casting one last glance at the woman who, engrossed in her own narrative, has not even noticed him. The forward movement of the line snaps her back to attention, though, as this throng of New Yorkers eagerly presses in to get a good seat for tonight’s featured entertainment: story time.
Every week or two, crowds like this show up at standing-room-only venues in New York City and other major U.S. cities for a chance to hear personal stories told by ordinary people. These StorySLAMs, as they are called, are put on by The Moth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling that began in 1997 as a gathering of friends swapping stories on a porch in Georgia.
Some people come just to watch and listen. Others, like the woman in black, come with stories in hand, ready to jump up on stage if her name is drawn and share a funny or touching tale with a room full of complete strangers.
