Tonight, The Moth Mainstage will be performed before a sold-out crowd in Traverse City. But yesterday, a few storytellers from The Moth did a workshop with a classroom of about 25 high school students.
They talked about how storytelling builds community and helps people reflect on their own lives.
Shannon Cason is from Detroit. He says growing up, he always loved playing games. But, when he got older his love for games got him in trouble with gambling.
He had a job as a manager of a local bank, but his habits left him with a negative checking account, eating Raman noodles for dinner and living with his sister.
Then, the thought occurred to him that he could “borrow” some money from the bank vault, and pay it back before anybody noticed.
“I tell the tellers I’m going to lunch— I go to the Motor City Casino,” Cason says. “I got $50,000 stuffed in every pocket, even in my underwear.”
You can guess what happens next. Eventually, the money he took from his bank’s vault is gone.
“I get up from the table,” Cason remembers. “I walk through the lights, the sounds, the people, the smoke, and out the door to fresher air. It feels surreal.”
Cason told his story to the Front Street Writers, a group of students interested in pursuing writing as a profession.
'When you're telling a story it's really intimate because you're looking at this person. You're hearing them tell their story.' Abbie Crick
Abbie Crick is a senior in the program. She says listening to an intimate story like the one Shannon Cason tells, makes it easy to develop a certain kinship, even though they don’t know each other.
Crick says storytelling is an opportunity to engage with people she might not otherwise interact with.
“It’s incredible to hear spoken stories,” she says. “It’s very different than when you write stories, because when you write it’s very anonymous. There’s no really accountability to an audience whereas when you’re telling a story it’s really intimate because you’re looking at this person. You’re hearing them tell their story.”
The storytelling event known as The Moth started in the late 90’s, and a radio program began in 2009. They’ve even developed an educational arm.
People like Catherine McCarthy teach students things like storytelling structure and how to brainstorm for story ideas.
She leads a brainstorming exercise with the students where they have to complete the sentence, “I’m the kind of person who…” It’s an attempt to get students thinking about what makes them unique. It also let’s other people get a sense of who you are, and that’s a key to storytelling.
McCarthy says in addition to community building among students, live storytelling is an outlet for self reflection.
“It’s sort of a pivotal time developmentally," she says, "to start developing the capacity to really reflect on your life.”
McCarthy says the process of telling a story and actually working on the craft of it, is a great motivator for needing a reflective piece. Storytellers, she says, need to be able to ask themselves why they did something or why something mattered to them.
If you’re wondering whatever happened to Shannon Cason, well, eventually, he notified his bank about what he did.
He remembers talking on the phone with the bank’s regional president, who gave him some advice that stuck with him. Cason recalls him saying, "Shannon, don’t do anything stupid. It’s only money, it’s not the end of the world, son.”
Later, he was sentenced to one day behind bars, and five years of probation. He says it’s was hard, but he paid back the entire $50,000 he’d lost at the casino.
Tonight, Shannon Cason will tell a different story from his life growing up in Detroit, at the City Opera House, in Traverse City.
