As a Midwesterner (born in Iowa, bred in Minn.,) I’m humble enough to admit that New Englanders & Southerners originated storytelling in America. These days Jonesborough TN is considered ground zero; it’s the HQ of the National Storytelling Network http://www.storynet.org/ which is sponsoring it’s annual conference in Los Angeles this year where I’ll be telling a tale Friday July 30th. NSN’s huge national membership ranges from librarians, to inspirational storytellers, to contemporary spoken word artists & memoirists like myself.
My scene here in Los Angeles revolves around story slams in nightclubs - judged storytelling contests where a pre-announced theme determines the night’s topic for the storytellers who throw their names in a hat. The premier storytelling competitions are under the auspices of The Moth http://www.themoth.org – a NY-based non-profit which sponsors both the hat-in-the-ring slams and celeb-driven curated events. Currently five NY-area nightclubs hold monthly Moth Slams and three in Los Angeles, and it’s spreading. Chicago has a Moth night each month, and curated Moth events have been held in Portland OR, and other locales around the U.S. Atlantan George Dawes Green founded The Moth in NY in 1997 inspired by nostalgic memories of friends & family swapping tales late at night as moths fluttered against the screen porch.
Storytelling and oratory are mankind’s earliest form of entertainment, and with contemporary practitioners & boosters like Ira Glass on NPR’s This American Life, Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, and The Moth’s new story radio show on 60 public radio stations plus its top 10 i-tunes podcast, the storytelling movement is spreading fast. And this is all good news. Even major Fortune 500 corporations have come to the Moth and asked if The Moth storytellers could help corporate execs “tell their story.”
Coming up in June, 2010 is the semi-annual The Moth Grand Story Slam Championship pitting ten Moth Story Slam winners against each other in a knock-down, drag-out judged story competition at L.A.’s premier rock’n’roll club The EchoPlex http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=a00e5e0f0c63a9c4c57b324b8&id=7c7083e6ee&e=5adee6ed4e
For background this New York Times article is informative. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/fashion/16moth.html?_r=2&scp=6&sq=the+moth&st=nyt
L.A. Times veteran Iris Schneider photographed & penned this portrait of storytelling in L.A.: http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2010/03/telling_stories.php
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