Storytelling As Art

Last week I got the immense privilege of going to the Circus Bar on 1st street for an event I had never heard of called The Moth with my English class, and let me tell you it was a bit of a doozy.

But first let me explain what The Moth is, because I had never heard of it until my professor told our class about it a couple of weeks ago. The Moth is a program/segment on NPR which hosts storytellers: people who tell real stories about their lives in an exciting and heartfelt way. To find these storytellers, radio programs all across the country host their own live events, generally called story slams but specifically called The Moth. These events are competitions wherein the winner gets the chance to share their story on NPR. I’m not exactly sure how this happens, if the story is rerecorded at a later date or if they use the recording live from that night, but it gets put on NPR somehow which is pretty cool to me.

There’s also rules that accompany The Moth as well (it’s very structured):

1. Your story must be no longer than 5 minutes. There is a minute grace period, but you need to wrap it up, or else it could affect your score negatively

2. Your story must be true. This is not a fiction reading. This is REAL LIFE (bonus points if you get the reference I just made)

3. Your story must be high-risk. In other words, your story has got to matter in some way shape or form. In the fiction writing world we call this conflict and people eat it up.

4. Your story must follow the theme of the night. The night we went the theme was “adventure.”

The way it worked was you showed up at 6 (because if you didn’t you probably didn’t have a place – it sells out every week here in Ann Arbor), and if you want to share a story you put your name in the hat. The first person’s name gets drawn by the host, and then after that each person who goes up picks the next person to go from the hat. There’s no limit to how many names there are in the hat, but only 10 people go each night, so even if your name is in the hat you may end up just chilling and watching everyone else for the rest of the night.

These were the things I was told. The thing I wasn’t told was how much I would love this event.

Now, I should preface this by saying I’ve never been to the Circus Bar, and thus had no idea what to expect even concerning the space we were in. As soon as we arrived, though, I knew it was going to be a night to remember. The line was crazy long, almost stretching to the end of the block, even in -10 degree weather. Once inside, there were free buckets of popcorn all around, a perk I wasn’t expecting either. The din from conversation was so loud I could barely hear myself think, but it was that good kind of loud when you know everyone is relaxed and having fun. And this was all before the stories started.

The stories were absolutely phenomenal. I first off applaud everyone who went up there and spoke, because I sure as heck couldn’t do that. Maybe after going a few times and writing out and memorizing exactly what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it, but that’s only a maybe still. It takes guts to go up there and talk about things that happened to you, whether it be when you stole some fish you caught on a fun family trip, or a story about how you thought of your mom as you hung on the side of the cliff, frozen in fear and not wanting to climb any further.

But the real question that was brought up, the one my class was trying to discover, was this question about storytelling. The famous theorist Walter Benjamin argues that storytelling is an art that’s now been lost, replaced by the solitary practice of reading the novel. For the sake of our class, we relied heavily on this second aspect, the idea that the novel is a replacement for storytelling, and how The Moth and the occurrence of other story slams fits into this perspective.

Even though this argument is interesting and compelling in its own right, I’m more interested in the first aspect, this labeling of storytelling as “art.” I had never really thought about storytelling as another form of art until it was brought up reading this piece. But I didn’t challenge it; sure, storytelling is art, right? But then why hadn’t I thought about it before?

To define storytelling as art, we must first define what art is, according to some philosophical law I forgot immediately after I took my Intro to Philosophy final two years ago. And yet, isn’t that the main struggle for artists? What is art, really, in the grand scheme of things? So then how can we in turn include or deny storytelling as art?

I’m sure everyone has their own personal definition of art that, collectively, comes somewhat close to a pure definition, but I’m going to refrain from sharing mine now. And it’s not because I think my definition is so good (or bad) that I don’t want to share it, but because I’m still trying to form my definition. It’s constantly shifting and changing, and I’m always getting new perspectives from students and professors who all have brilliant things to say about art.

Right now, I will say that storytelling does fit into my shape-shifter definition of art. Will it stay? Who knows.

If you wanna check out The Moth, it is seriously awesome and I highly recommend it. Get your tickets early; it sells out every week.