FARMINGTON – The Emery Arts Center theater was full Tuesday evening for the inaugural BeaverMoth Storytelling event hosted by Horisun Antunee (’24) and Lewis Robinson (UMF Creative Writing faculty).
If nothing else, it bridged an often felt gap between the college and the municipality by marking a return to the pre-2019 days of a campus for all. The event was as much for the town as it was for the school and that was obvious by the makeup of the audience.
If nothing else, it proved the importance of humanities in higher education and society as a whole. Stories are our fiber, and they not only bind our days and months and years together in our memories, but they knit us together, our stories overlapping rhythmically, creating one masterpiece. Probably a cowl.
If nothing else, it left us cry-laughing in our seats. Who doesn’t want to hear the Assistant Dean of Teaching and Learning talk about shotgunning PBRs? Who doesn’t want to hear about murderous two-year-olds?
But, in fact, it did so much more than all that. Because at the very end of the night, as tellers were hugged by listeners, as the lights came up and everyone grabbed their cowls, a box sat in the spotlight, waiting for nominations for the next great story.
And this moment was the final nail for making BeaverMoth the newest treasured community event, just as the New Commons Project and Moonlight Madness will never leave local memories, BeaverMoth, too, will surely not. Because that little box allows every person in the audience to imagine themselves on that stage. What stories might they share? What details would they include, and which would they leave out? Would the listeners laugh? Would the teller cry?
“Stories are medicine. Stories are the currency of community,” Robinson said.
The audience went home and sifted through their medicine cabinets. They flipped the projector from one memory to the next and considered each carefully. They imagined the vulnerability it would take to sit on that stool, to talk about riding in that rickshaw, or crouching under that motorcycle, or choosing to stay in that car in California, and just by imagining that vulnerability, they became slightly more so.
BeaverMoth invites everyone to become vulnerable and examine the moments, some as mundane as a perfect line from a perfect character, that are worth sharing.
“We are all one decision away from living an entirely different life,” Brian Ufford said in his fantastic telling of a pivotal life moment (spoiler: it involves Ferris Bueller).
BeaverMoth will likely be happening at least once a semester on campus at University of Maine at Farmington. Stay tuned for details on the next event.
