REVIEW: COSTUMES – 2022 Fall Ann Arbor StorySLAMS at The Blind Pig

The Moth StorySLAM was a hit! 

If you’ve never heard of Moth, this is how StorySLAMs work: 

StorySLAMs are a night of storytelling. Ten brave souls volunteer to tell a five-minute story, which are given scores. The story crowned with the highest score moves on to compete at the Moth Grand Slam. In between each five-minute story, there are also story slips (strips?), which are anonymous 140-character micro stories that are shared in between each storyteller. The story slip prompt was, tell us about a time the mask came off. 

 

“True stories. Told. Live. No costumes, props, visual aids.”

The theme of the night was Costumes. This compiled into stories about prized garments, wigs, dyed hair, Halloween, costumes for the sake of survival, and revealing your true self. 

In a way, the clothes we wear are our daily costume, as the event had described. As soon as the host, Amir, described his attire as “recently fired from Hogwarts,” I knew the night could only be going good places.

My friend Isabel and I wrote our story slips with her copywriter skills obliterating my wordy ramble. 

Being one of the youngest people in the room, with big fat sharpied Xs profaning both of my hands, it felt weird to see all the adults of Ann Arbor sip their cocktails on my left and right, laughing boisterously at the host’s jokes. It felt like I was at the filming of a sitcom. All the laughs felt fake, like someone pressed a remote and a ‘LAUGH’ sign lit up and cued a sound effect from the audience. I sipped my water and swallowed this new taste of sophisticated fun.

The three teams of judges were specially handpicked from the audience: people who were completely unburdened by expertise, with no experience whatsoever under their belts. At least one person would be telling a part of their lives to an audience for the first time in their lives.

… And the fate of these storytellers was in the hands of judges named The Ghostbusters, The Mothman (“…Moth is a copywriter trade mark” – Amir), and Witch, please.

I’m afraid I can’t do justice to the ten stories that were told, and I wish you could just hear them yourself. To boil it down, there were stories about clown sex, sexy Beetlejuice Halloween attire and hand-me-down tank tops, a fiberglass back brace from the eighties, designing yoga clothes, working with a trauma patient, a lawyer dying her hair, seeing the sea for the first time, misunderstandings from an eyepatch, a pleated drinking skirt named Alice, and a closeted trans woman who played the part of a male pastor for years until she found the freedom of not pretending.

To our complete shock, Isabel’s anonymous story slip was pulled first, mine second. My first Moth experience was off to a great start.

Amir walked up to the mic, unfolded my slip, and read: “I ran over a grandma with a bike. Wheel punched her leg, my chin got chucked. Mask heavy, soaked red, pooled with blood, it fell off.”

 Silence. 

Then the room exploded. Amir went on a tangent. “You’re not focused on the right mask, it’s not all about you! You’re worried about your mask when Calin’s (the sexy beetlejuice girl) grandma is lying on the ground, clutching her spaghetti straps, wheezing out her last?!!”

A few more of the good ones:

“When I first met my girlfriend I used to hold my farts. Now that she’s in love with me I toot to my heart’s content.”

“Took him home. We did it. My wig came off.” 

By the end of the night I had no idea which story would win; all of them were phenomenal, unexpected, fantastic. A guy did the math on the whiteboard. We drumrolled.

…..It was 3-way tie! (A drunken holler of “3-way!!!” from an audience member.) In this scenario, they decided to take the highest individual score, which had been Johanna’s (the ex-pastor and proud trans woman, who no longer bears the burden of being in costume)!

The night ended with a late night Blank Slate run where we ran into the host of the show. We psyched ourselves up to own up to the stories we wrote (Listen Amir… I’m the one who ran over that grandma…), but he grabbed his cone in a brisk blur and the door jingled on his way out, coattail fluttering before it closed shut. The universe didn’t want us to confess.

I’ll definitely be joining the next StorySLAM in November! There’s no telling how the night will go with Moth, where its wispy wings might take you. The clown sex story is a testament to that.

REVIEW: The Moth GrandSLAM Championship

We all experience pain in our lives, and The Moth GrandSLAM transformed The Ark into an incredible stage where ten StorySLAM champions were able to tell the true stories of their Growing Pains live.

As host Amir Baghdadchi put it, The Moth GrandSLAM is the closest public radio gets to American Ninja Warrior. The Moth is magical. It creates a temple for regular human beings and the tales they have to tell. And, on September 26, 2018, The Ark became that temple.

Amir started us off with some amusing stories of his adventures through 5th grade and the wisdom of plagiarizing in someone’s authentic voice, passing on the message that the most important moral pains have to deal with one’s moral character. As we got ready for a night of storytelling, Violinist Natalie Frakes was the timekeeper, providing a friendly reminder with a graceful violin note when the five minute mark came around.

Growing pains deal with people; as a result, there were many stories about relationships, and specifically, with fathers. Jill Chenault told a heartwarming story about her will to be strong and independent and how her changing relationship with her father, who now has Alzheimer’s, has given her the opportunity to now support him. Jim Pinion also talked about his father, and how they built their relationship through building his first car together.

We also heard from the perspective of fathers. Maxie Jones provided a new take on fatherhood as he shared his struggles in leaving bachelorhood behind, but confirmed that he wouldn’t trade fatherhood for anything. Eddie Hejka, who has been the father of 18 kids through adoption and foster care, shared the time his black son was ticketed for curfew violation in Detroit. He noted that many people were caught in the court system, questioning whether the court was truly a system for justice and pointing out that it was time for the courts to go through some growing pains.

Romantic relationships are also a classic example of growing pains, whether that is internally or externally. Matthew Mansour charmingly details his struggle in accepting his sexuality and the threats he faced when he came out. Susan Ciotti bared her soul about her abusive and cheating husband and her ability to fight for herself and feel complete.

There were also personal stories told. Joanna Courteau narrated an amusing story about how she never grew up. With the existence of false cognates (which is kind of like fake news, Joanna says), she amused the audience with her take on the growing pains that never go away. Stephanie Holloway talked about the of financial freedom and the all-too-relatable pains of financial responsibility. Paul Walters recounted the time he wanted to save the day when cycling, as nothing is more characteristic of growing pains than being a Sufferlandrian. And Rob Osterman explained why the first song in Frozen makes him cry — it’s a blatant reminder of mortality.

In between storytellers, Amir read the stories of the audience through prompts on papers they filled out. From little tales of when people had to make headway the hard way, or when they took a rivalry too far, it was a night filled with personal anecdotes from everyone that connected everyone in the room through these stories.

Three teams of judges scored the storytellers. Susan left the night as a Moth GrandSLAM champion, but all ten storytellers were champions in their vulnerability and excellent storytelling. There was pure laughter and heartfelt silence and emotional tears as these stories were told.

Our stories are the “honest truths that make up who we are,” and at The Ark that night, we got to hear those honest truths in their full glory.

PREVIEW: The Moth GrandSLAM Championship

One of the most original forms of art, storytelling is a tradition that never dies. The spoken word can express sorrow, hardships, humor, and triumph. There is nothing more raw than an individual standing on a stage, crafting words in a way that transforms their past into the present. The Moth Podcasts never fail to entertain me and touch my soul, and now, I finally get to experience these performances live.

The Moth GrandSLAM is taking place on September 26 at 8pm. It is the final culmination of the best of the best stories in Ann Arbor as stories come alive at The Ark. Join me at the intimate local venue where we will be taken on many different and wonderful journeys in one single night.