The Moth has just turned 18 and you’re visiting Australia for the first time, hitting up Melbourne writers’ festival, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas and even the ABC airwaves – is this a gap year?
We’ve wanted this for so long – to put down roots here. In the beginning, we started in New York and so the stories were very New York-centric. Then we started the radio show and podcast but it still sounded a bit New York. As we expanded to have listeners in other part of the country, we wanted stories about them, not just about the people who lived in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side.
We made a big effort to expand to include other voices. When that went well, we thought: where else can we reach and what other stories can we tell and bring to these listeners? In 2008, we went to Perth writers’ festival and it was an amazing set. The audiences really seemed to get it and we loved working with Australian storytellers. So when we got invited back to Melbourne and Sydney, we thought: this is great.
The Moth’s tagline is ‘true stories told live’ – is that still your guiding principle?
Live and true, yes. Everything we do comes back to live. The radio shows are always recorded live, never in the studio. Even for the book, we ended up transcribing all the live stories, only lightly editing so hopefully when you’re reading them, you could hear the voice – a one person show in your head.
As for true, we always say a great Moth story comes from a performer who has the willingness to be vulnerable and to “tell on” themselves. Today’s culture is built around our greatest achievements. Our resumes. Our Facebook personas. You can’t get real – we candycoat the story in case our ex-boyfriends are reading. The Moth is the opposite of that. A great Moth story is when someone owns up to a time when something went wrong for them, a great Moth story is specific but speaks to other people of their own experience. Our mistakes connect us to each other in a way.
Did you really go to a Moth show on your very first night in New York City?
My second night! When I started hearing about the Moth, I was still living in Boston. It sounded amazing, that you could go to this live show and hear these stories from all walks of life: a homeless guy, a veteran, a mother. I moved to New York for a TV job – I had a been a film-maker but I’d lost the heart of it and I was in a sort of crisis, trying to figure out what I was going to do?
Then someone brought me to a Moth show. My friend was volunteering so I was sitting by myself in this boat anchored out in the New York harbour, listening to these stories. And I instantly fell in love. I remember Ted Conover, one of our best storytellers, performing that night.
I went to each show and even though they were so small back then, it was already a cult thing. You couldn’t get into some shows, they were so wonderful. This was the early naughts. After 9/11, they were really struggling, a lot of arts organisations were really struggling. I had been hired at MTV, but my heart wasn’t in it. So when my job got caught up for four months, I started volunteering downtown. I came on as a producer and 18 months later I took over as artistic director.
Has podcasting changed the rules of the storytelling game?
Podcasting for us is a revelation. It suddenly allowed us to connect not just in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago but all over the world. The slow build defined us. Initially, it was exciting to think audiences all around the world were tuned in – to get that feedback from 2000 listeners and have them send us stories. Now, we still connect but that audience is in their millions. We’ve adjusted to how many people are listening and we try to tune into what they are saying. It’s still thrilling.
What I love about podcasts is that we live in this world where you often go out trying to convince everyone to buy what you’re selling. Our approach is the opposite. You create something you really love and trust that other people who would also love it find their way to it. We’re not trying to buy them.
How as the Moth kept going with so much competition – live and online?
We’re only as good as our last show. We have to remember that if we expect people to listen in. There are hundreds of other wonderful storytelling podcasts now. Part of what I hope makes us special is that we’ve all been around a long time. Most of our senior producers pre-date me to a time when no one got paid. We have to keep it interesting to ourselves – to do the same job, to keep wanting to come back, to ask: what is the next story?
Our two greatest assets are our storytellers and, of course, the audience. The Moth audience are very special. They want to be entertained but they want people to do well. It’s the opposite of standup comedy, in that sense, though the stories often make me laugh.
Is storytelling an art-form in its own right now?
It’s something we debate a lot. We do feel it should be recognised as one. It’s a skill that can be learned. Some of our greatest storytellers started out and didn’t quite nail it the first time. Even Adam Gopnik, his very first Moth – he’s always way too harsh – but he said, “I blew it!” He was a bit too standuppy. Then he came back and he really went into the heart and depth of the problem in his next story, and people went insane! Years later, he repeated the original story and it was much more Moth, rather than joke, joke, joke, joke. And it landed so much better.
The Moth is sometimes criticised as being a bit “self-help” ...
I think it can offer spiritual sustenance but that’s not why we do it. It’s not why our storytellers do it. We always try to be very careful that it doesn’t come across as therapy. One of the things I like to tell new storytellers is this quote from the wonderful pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. She says she tries to preach from her scars not her wounds, that if they’re still wounds, then she can’t do a good job.
But I will say that when the audience do hear a Moth story about something that connects with them, they get in touch with us to say it made them feel less alone. It’s like watching Louis CK’s comedy – hearing him admit to some of the more extreme things in his life stops us from beating ourselves up so much.
- The Moth Razor’s Edge is at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney Opera House on 6 September featuring David Crabb, Dan Ilic, Suki Kim, Guy Curd, Omar Musa and Adrienne Truscott. The Moth Radio Hour broadcasts on Radio National Saturdays at 7pm
