A collage of the Middlebury community explored the escapable fact of life: mortality. At this year’s Cocoon, which debuted on Oct. 3, this year’s theme, “Before I die…”, invited speakers and audience members to reflect on life’s impermanence and the beauty that comes from embracing it.
This year’s theme was inspired by the eponymous art installation curated by Camiel Schroeder ’26.5 and Susan Dong ’25.5 in the Mahaney Arts Center (MAC) lobby. Adapted from the global installation by artist Cathy Chang, the piece invites community members to write their own responses to the prompt in chalk, creating a public dialogue around death and desire.
This year, the six speakers interpreted the prompt to varying degrees.
The evening started at an archaeological site in Northern Guatemala, with Professor of Anthropology James Fitzsimmons and his tale of unlikely team dynamics and more than 30 bee stings, all while conducting field work.
This was followed by Hafez Sami-Sagdehi ’28.5, who spoke about discovering a documentary on the El Camino in the midst of finding his own path as a child, and his aspiration to one day, before death, walk El Camino alongside his mother.
Associate Professor of Biology Susan DeSimone then spoke about her relationship to sailing, and navigating through deadly, tumultuous waters on one of her first sailing trips to Burlington.
After intermission, director of the Middlebury School of Abenaki, Jesse Bowman Bruchac, provided cultural context for a tale told countless times through generations of Abenaki people, the indigenous community native to this region of the country, keeping their language and culture alive.
“It's a story about changing conflict into kinship, which I think we all need to be able to do better in this world,” Bowman Bruchac said. “We learned in the story of how we could possibly deescalate a situation that could have turned out terribly and actually worked out for the villains… even they may need redemption…it's a powerful lesson and an ancient story.”
Following this story, Associate Professor of Black Studies Jerry Philogene spoke about her love for painting and how that led her to dedicating her life to art history. Philogene shifted the focus of the storytelling experience to the audience through passing out slips of paper with the prompt “Before I die…” whose answers were read out by the student producers.
Dr. Christine Gentry took the stage for the grand finale. She has been featured on “This American Life”, has won three MOTH Grand Story Slams and is the director of the Yale Teaching Fellowship. Gentry told a moving story about donating a kidney to a stranger, an act which set off a chain of transplants that saved multiple lives.
“There is an electric current and the idea that the audience is being transported with you,” Gentry said. “It feels like they're holding you in your hand…we roam the earth looking for a narrative. It is how we make sense of the world.”
For many attendees, the event underscored storytelling’s importance in building empathy and community.
“I think sharing stories and connecting with others is so impactful and the most powerful form of communication,” audience member Mack Briglin ’26.5 said.
“It's really lovely to hear from these professors and community members and people of different ages have very different perspectives on how to tell a story,” audience member and University of Vermont student Charlotte Reminais said.
Bruchac emphasized the unique, living quality of storytelling. “I learned to tell stories from my father and other indigenous storytellers,” he said. “I don’t memorize words, I just point out the things along the way to get from the beginning of the journey to the end, and I'm inspired by the audience and the reactions.”
“After Cocoon, everyone kind of comes together and there is a butterfly effect,” Lea said. “Everyone wants to tell everyone else a story now. When you come down here into the reception hall, everyone is exchanging stories.”
Cocoon began in 2012, when Luke Greenway ’14.5, inspired by the Moth Radio Hour, decided to bring live storytelling to the college community through the Middlebury Moth Up! program. Since then, MAC director Liza Sacheli has worked with students to grow the event into one of the college’s signature literary art showcases.
“We have six storytellers each year telling true stories, live without notes,” Sacheli said. “We usually try to have a nice balance between students and faculty members and staff members and community members, so there's a really nice broad mix of people telling stories,” Sacheli explained.
This year’s student producers, Karina Lea ’27 and Mary Bosco ’28.5 , collaborated closely with each storyteller to strengthen their narrative structures and delivery technique.
“You don’t want to tell someone how to tell their story, so you don’t, [you] sit down with them and say, ‘I think you should do this, that and that,’” Lea said. “Like, what more do you want people to know, what kind of scene are you trying to paint… the balancing act is the hardest part of producing the stories.”
The full recording of this year’s Cocoon is now available for free with captions on the Robison Hall Youtube Channel, in an effort by the MAC to allow these stories to reach as wide an audience as possible. For those eager to tell a story, Middlebury Moth Up! runs monthly story slams in the Gamut Room, the next scheduled for Oct. 30. Students interested in performing or attending can contact Lea or Bosco for more details.
