BRATTLEBORO-Everyone has a story to tell, but what about a time and place to tell it?
Laura Lockie of Brattleboro has created such. Roughly once a month since October, she and her husband, Ken, have hosted the Spotted Moth at Brattleboro’s 118 Elliot Street Gallery. The next opportunity, open to all, is Wednesday, July 29, 6 to 8 p.m.
In a recent press release, people of all ages are invited to “come tell your first person tru-ish story […] without prizes or competition, just [for] people who want to hear you tell your story.”
Lockie offers a theme for each month’s session: July’s is “Hidden in plain sight.” Participating attendees put their names into a hat, from which Lockie, as emcee-facilitator, draws the person to deliver the next narrative.
That person will speak for five to seven minutes and tell their story.
Based loosely on the popular worldwide storytelling program, The Moth, the local series is named after the six-spotted Burnet moth that graced its first flyer and now its logo.
“I’d asked Daniel Hales, a friend who’s a talented writer, musician, and collage artist, to do our first flyer, so it would really stand out, and he delivered!” she recalls. “I thought ‘Spotted Moth’ just sounded cool.”
Stand up and tell your story
For 27 years, Lockie lived in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked as a background actor in film with Central Casting and Tyler Perry, and on other independent productions.
While there, Lockie became involved with a storytelling group, Carapace (“the turtle shell”), which has welcomed everyday people to “to walk in off the street and tell a story without editing or judgment,” she says.
“In the time that I was in the group, I saw people’s lives change and develop,” she explains. Some went on to become writers or develop public personas. For others, “it just allowed them to develop into who they were supposed to be.”
Lockie, originally from the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, moved to the area three years ago. She wanted to offer that same transformative experience in Brattleboro — to offer a structure within which one could just “get up in front of a room and tell your story,” unfiltered.
In response to an observation that society seems to be turning more to storytelling as a vehicle for promotion, education, and expression, Lockie says: “This is just a personal theory, but what’s held up to us in the media has become unattainable for most of us. It’s really pushed this kind of conformity, like everybody has to look like a Kardashian or they have to be a Marvel superhero: It’s just so narrow. I think that people who are real want to celebrate the real.”
At a time when “AI is taking over and you don’t know who to trust or what kind of content to trust, I think people are very hungry just for something that is relatable and real and human,” she says. “I think the humanity of that experience is what is really lacking in our lives.”
The Spotted Moth has been building, says Lockie. “We’ve got some momentum.”
She adds that it’s important to have a “continuity of image, a regular meeting, and a core group, which we seem to be developing.”
“And food — apparently, food,” adds Lockie with a chuckle: She’s provided welcome fare for each event.
The regulars
Over the last several months, tellers have included Lockie herself, Cyndi Cain Fitzgerald, Harral Hamilton, Tina Olsen, Denise Evans, Tamera Stenn, Jesse Lepkoff, Donald McCullogh, Alex Lockie, Lissa Weinmann, Chuck Collins, Mary Collins, and Maureen Daylor.
Daylor, reflecting on her interest in storytelling, explains that her grandmother “was born in Ireland, and she told us stories from the old country.”
Coming from a “family of talkers,” the Guilford resident adds that “one of the things mostly talkers do is tell stories. I’ve been doing this, you know, my whole life.”
She describes herself as “a pretty animated kind of person” who prefers to tell rather than read her stories. “It’s just, viscerally, a very different experience.”
When asked of the value of storytelling, Daylor observes, “as much as the internet has connected us, it’s still alienated us in a lot of ways. So I think in-person interactions are so incredibly different,” as is the difference “between live communications and those done on a screen.”
Daylor grew up in Brockton, Massachusetts, “a very tough town, famous for boxers,” where, “back in grammar school, you could fight on the playground and nothing really happened.”
Given that and a rough family life, and with work experience in human services, she’s collected some stories. And even more with stints as a camp counselor, a playground instructor, a paraeducator, a property manager, a recreation director, a Tupperware warehouse worker, and an employee at Northeast Cooperatives.
“I pumped gas at a couple of different gas stations,” she adds. “One of them was nicknamed ‘Gay Gas’ by the community because the manager was gay and he hired a whole bunch of gay people.”
Daylor has penned much of her experience as memoir, and it’s from that which she draws stories to tell. She adds that she has read up on The Moth and its storytelling technique, which differs quite a bit from the writing of stories.
The benefit of the former is “that I can look at people; I can talk,” Daylor adds.
Area artist Tina Olsen is also a regular at Spotted Moth. “It’s an opportunity to talk to a live audience: I’m older, and it gives me a chance to remember things that were important in my life. I spent a long time working in a psychiatric hospital doing art and music, and had the chance to work with people who didn’t connect easily.”
“I just learned a lot about the power of personal one-to-one talking and sharing stories — and songs” and the like, says Olsen. “It brings a feeling of communion with people as I remember things I had no idea I did remember.”
And “that’s what I like about it,” she says.
“I remember things from when I was a child, and I share them,” Olsen says. “Then hearing other people, it turns out that they, clearly, share so much — that all of us are so much to all of us.”
The next Spotted Moth takes place Wednesday, July 29, at 118 Elliot Gallery in Brattleboro. Storytellers, unless they object, may be filmed to air on Brattleboro Community Television’s Spotted Moth program. Registration isn’t required. For more information, contact Laura Lockie at spottedmothvt@gmail.com or 404-227-7957.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.