Cocoon Smashes Concert Hall Records

On Friday, Oct. 24, the Middlebury MothUP hosted the second annual Cocoon in the Mahaney Center for the Arts.  Featuring six storytellers from wildly different backgrounds each tackling the theme of blood, Cocoon was an intimate and singular experiment in narration and audience engagement.

For the uninitiated, Cocoon is fundamentally inspired by The Moth, which was originally created in 1997 by George Dawes Green as a live storytelling event in New York City.  Since then, it has been adapted for radio by NPR contributor and six-time Peabody Award recipient Jay Allison as The Moth Radio Hour, in addition to countless variations across the country.

While the College has hosted its own incarnation of The Moth since 2010, Cocoon aimed to bring the popular storytelling format to a larger audience while featuring an expanded cast of storytellers. The event, now in its second year, was completely sold-out and boasted a waitlist of about 40 people, one of the largest crowds ever to express interest in a MCA Concert Hall performance.

Produced by Veronica Rodriguez ’16.5 and coordinated by Luke Greenway ’14.5 and Rachel Liddell ’15 and Director of the MCA Liza Sacheli, Cocoon was a startling and captivating experience.  Each storyteller offered something at once entertaining and uninhibited.  From Kathryn Blume, an Oregonian reconciling with her far-flung New York relatives, to Bill Torrey, a Vermont native recounting a tale of teenage rebellion, the storytellers offered glimpses into dynamic and complex life experiences.  Often fantastic pacing and a natural ability to balance comedy and sobriety enabled the speakers to easily endear themselves to the audience, drawing us in while managing to retain a wholly singular voice.

The beauty of the storytelling format in particular, bare of any script or visual aid, was that each storyteller managed to conjure up entire backdrops with just a few words, allowing the imaginations of the audience members to fill in the gaps.  Over the course of a single evening, the audience was transported to the backwoods of midcentury Vermont through Torrey, the swamps of Jacksonville, Florida through Assistant Professor of Dance Christal Brown, and a darkly comical funeral in a Jewish cemetery through Kathryn Blume, as well as Chris de la Cruz ’13 and Melissa Surrette ’16.  Each storyteller offered not only a sense of self, but also a sense of place.  Through this we can begin to sense the purpose of traditional storytelling.  Why have oral traditions existed throughout history, but to bring people to places they may never have the chance to see and to allow them to vicariously live through experiences they otherwise can’t?

The live setting only enhanced the strength of the storytelling format.  While radio broadcasts may reach a broader audience, they lack not only the physical shared space of a live show, but also cannot possibly recreate the sense of intimacy that is generated both among members of the audience and between the storytellers and the audience.

In his story, Otto Pierce ’13.5 used blood in multiple contexts, underlying his relationships with three other young men and exploring the social and political forces that have led them, since their initial meeting, to live very different lives than him.  Be it an HIV infection, spilt blood or near-death experiences, blood and race have become defining signifiers of distinctions between young men who otherwise share common ground.  Pierce mixed the personal and profound adeptly, using his personal experiences to consider the social forces that in many ways determine our futures, and invited the audience to do the same.  We came away not only delighted by a story of brotherhood and youthful misadventures, but also sobered by the realization that there still exists such stark injustice in a country that has yet to fully resolve long-established racial disparities.

“Each format has its own kind of beauty,” Allison, who acted as emcee of the event, said.  “Just listening is lovely, but going and sitting in a room with an audience and being able to watch people’s faces is also beautiful.”

Yet despite the myriad formats The Moth can take, it has maintained its essential core since its inception.

“It doesn’t change or grow in any fundamental way,” Allison said.  “The concept of it has stayed true since the beginning; you just sit there and listen to your fellow man say something honest about their lives, take it or leave it.”

It is this honesty that gives an event like Cocoon its potency.   Not only was each story well crafted and interesting, but they all also came from a willingness to share some meaningful experience with virtual strangers, despite the potential for failure or embarrassment.  While every story offered something valuable, Brown’s story in particular was able to skillfully marry deft pacing with a raw and resonant subject.  While carefully plotted and articulated in a simple and straightforward manner, her exploration of her relationship with her late father still seemed to burst with moments of spontaneous passion.  The mark of truly transformative storytelling, Brown seemed to make new discoveries in a story she had likely rehearsed and told many times before.  As a result, the audience was left feeling they had witnessed something both deeply personal and massively momentous.  The event became not only a shared experience, but also a willful exchange between speaker and audience member.  A speaker offered their story, and in exchange, the audience members were left to assess its meaning and perhaps see their own lives a little differently.

In this sense, Cocoon, though high-concept and distinctive, boiled down to the essence of conversation, something that is easy to lose in a world that often seems driven by competing distractions.  Yet Cocoon, like all other incarnations of The Moth, suggests there is a craving for this type of extended and unornamented engagement.

“The lovely thing is that people are happily willing to sit there and listen to a single voice for an extended period of time,” Allison said.  “It’s an affirming thing to me.  We will still pay attention to each other without taking a phone call or needing special effects.”