'Cocoon' to Reach Wider Audience

Student organizers of the Middlebury MothUP have partnered with the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts to produce a high-caliber, curated storytelling event geared towards the larger College community. “Cocoon: Stories of Metamorphosis” will take place at the MCA Concert Hall on Friday, Oct. 25 at 8 p.m.

Inspired by acclaimed nationwide storytelling organization The Moth, “Cocoon” will feature six storytellers — two students, one alumna, one professor, and two Addison County community members — as well as Luke Greenway ’14.5 as emcee and MCA Technical Director and guitarist Mark Christensen with musical interludes.

Greenway has been working to put together the event along with his two MothUP co-organizers, Rachel Liddell ’15 and Veronica Rodriguez ’16.5, in cooperation with the Center for the Arts, the Committee on the Arts and the College Communications Office.

“It’s something that has been a long time in the making,” Greenway said, adding that it was MCA Director Liza Sacheli who initially approached him last spring about the possibility of collaboration.

“One of our goals at the Mahaney Center for the Arts is to establish a literary arts component to our programming,” Sacheli said. “The [MothUP] seemed like a perfect opportunity to bridge the areas of writing and performance — so it was a good fit for us.”

For the MothUP organizers, too, a partnership with the MCA was a natural next step for the student group, which has hosting storytelling events in the Gamut Room and Gamphitheatre since 2010. From the outset, founder Bianca Giaever ’12.5 intended for the MothUP to be a way to bridge the gap between the College and the town — storytelling as a community-builder, an idea echoed from current MothUP leadership as well.

These days, the MothUP regularly attracts crowds that far exceed the Gamut Room’s capacity. While the Moth-inspired format — all stories must be true and told without notes — lends itself to casual, intimate spaces like the Gamut Room, Greenway, Liddell and Rodriguez see “Cocoon” as an opportunity to build on what the MothUP has been and to grow the organization in new ways.

“People at the MothUP tell stories about losing their virginity, or they swear, or they talk about drugs — and obviously, this changes that,” Liddell said. “But I like the idea of opening up that community.”

“Cocoon,” Liddell said, will exhibit a more highly polished, professional product than the Middlebury MothUP traditionally offers, marking an important transition in the story of the organization.

“Stories have an incredible power to bring people together that I’ve witnessed again and again at the MothUP,” Greenway said. “I can’t wait to bring that to a wider audience with this event.”

In addition to the higher-capacity and higher-quality performance space, “Cocoon” will also feature a more diverse group of storytellers that were hand-selected and groomed for the occasion. Mariam Khan ’16 and Emily Bogin ’16 will be the only student storytellers, alongside English and Environmental Studies professor Dan Brayton, recent alum Emily Jacke ’12.5, Town Hall Theater and Opera Company of Middlebury Director Doug Anderson and Vermont Public Radio producer Ric Cengeri.

“I am hoping to say something that other students will connect with but might not have considered themselves, or something they might have thought about but perhaps not voiced,” Bogin said.

“I have always admired [the MothUP’s] presence on campus and programming they have had in the past,” Kahn said. “In my story, I hope to express my personal experiences with ‘metamorphosis’ and speak about some of the lesser known aspects of my identity.”

Khan will be recounting stories from her experiences as a Muslim woman growing up in Maine and as a professional touring DJ.

Each of the storytellers has been working with Liddell, Greenway and Rodriguez in an effort to make their narratives more pointed and their performances more fluid, working towards an official Moth-caliber story as a goal. The evening itself will also be more refined, thanks in large part to a grant from Middlebury’s Committee on the Arts, which went towards funding production costs, publicity efforts, and a post-show reception for storytellers and audience members.

Tickets are on sale now through the Box Office at $5 for Middlebury students, $8 for Middlebury faculty, staff, alumni, and parents, and $10 for the general public. 70 percent of the proceeds from ticket sales will go to the MothUP organization, which is not an official student group and thus does not receive funding from the College.