The Moth is thrilled to set up residence in New Orleans, with a monthly StorySLAM at Café Istanbul, featuring stories by… maybe YOU? If you want to tell a story at The Moth, or know someone who'd be perfect, see all the details below. Throw your name in the hat or just come to listen!
Come join us for… "FIRSTS" on Tuesday, October 8
Hosted by: Dan Kennedy (host of The Moth podcast!)
7:00 p.m. Doors Open/ 7:30 p.m. Stories Begin
Café Istanbul
2372 St. Claude Ave. New Orleans
Please click here for General Admission tickets: $8
General admission tickets guarantee admittance, with a first-come first-serve selection of seating. Make sure to show up by 7:00 p.m. to ensure admittance.
Prepare a five-minute story about a maiden voyage! Wax on about your first: home run, miserable failure, roped steer, kiss, child, crisis of conscience, job, pet, toupee, trip overseas, internet date, grandchild or fist fight. Grand openings, birth order, wild initiations, or milestones reached. There's a first time for everything…
How it Works:
7:00 p.m. Sign up to tell a story, volunteer to be on a judging team or just settle into your seats and buckle up to listen to the show.
7:30 p.m. (SHARP) - We'll pick the first name and the show will begin. Each teller will have 5 minutes to tell his or her tale. After each story, the judges confer, and give a score. The teller with the highest score becomes our StorySLAM winner. The winner will compete with the year's other winners in our next GrandSLAM Championship.
Be Forewarned:
The Moth is for TRUE STORIES. OK, there won't be a fact-checker there, and the FBI probably won't dig into your files to verify the names and dates and places, but please know, emphatically, The Moth is not for fiction stories. The tiny fictions and lies we tell ourselves ARE part of our "true stories" but that one about you, Obama, Gandhi and Einstein up in a spaceship eating brownies... not so much.
The Moth is NOT a venue for readings; it is a venue for tellings. No notes, papers, or cheat sheets allowed. Contestants are judged on sticking to the five-minute time frame, sticking to the theme and having a story that sticks — one that has a conflict and a resolution.
Story tips:
No standup routines please: The Moth LOVES funny people but requires that all funny people tell funny STORIES. Steer clear of meandering endings: Your last line should be clear in your head. Start in the action and set up the stakes.
New Orleans StorySLAM Producers: Mallory Falk & Laine Kaplan-Levenson
Moth StorySLAM Producer: Jenifer Hixson
Moth StorySLAM Associate Producer: Robin Wachsberger
Our Host:
Dan Kennedy is host of The Moth podcast and the author of Loser Goes First: My Thirty Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation and Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, which the Times of London named a Book of The Year. His new novel, American Spirit, is now available. Kennedy is a longstanding contributor at McSweeneys.net, and his essays also appear in GQ magazine and in several anthologies including The New Yorker humorist Ian Frazier’s collection, Humor Me:An Anthology of Funny Contemporary Writing.
