If you’re drawn to the joy of laughter in the same way that a moth is drawn to a flame, you’ve got a number of choices in Milwaukee. But if you’d like to witness and/or be part of an array of comic confessionals meant to tickle deep emotions, then your best bet in the near future is The Moth Story Slam: Instincts.
On Thursday, Dec. 13, the Back Room @ Colectivo will boast an aroma of roughly 70% coffee beans/30% hot cocoa as audience-members-turned-performers in tandem with performers-turned-audience-members take the stage to narrate personal tales and charm the room with some quirks of the human psyche.
The event reads like a bold challenge to get with fresh entertainment in its description: “Prepare a five-minute tale involving your animal instincts. Tell us about your intuition or sixth sense, a premonition or other intangible instruction from your deep-down insides.”
The Moth spirit is captured by narrators such as Emerald Klauer, who described her delayed rebellion at the age of 18 by stating, “It wasn’t until I graduated high school that I began to regret my good behavior. I was facing life without rules and I was regretting not breaking any of them.”
That’s the setup for a story in which Klauer interacts with a dude getting high through a tube in his backpack at the Pitchfork Music Festival before she gets liquored up enough to numb the pain of having her nipples pierced. Results may vary from cringeworthy to enchanting in the forum of open-mic storytelling where the names of performers are picked from a hat, so if you prefer theater that’s more rooted in tradition, check out this list of iconic names: Pig-Pen, Woodstock, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus...
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Did I have you at Pig-Pen? Well, then you should probably get a load of A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Riverside Theater on Saturday, Dec. 8 at 2 and 6 p.m. A hallmark of Americana since 1950, everyone’s favorite bald kid made his holiday debut back in 1965 with an animated special penned by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. The stage adaptation features the soothing jazz-twinkle of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s original score and resonates with cheerful nostalgia. Anyone who can frown his way through songs like “O Tenenbaum” and “Linus and Lucy” checks out as having a broken soul.
This December, whether you’re bound and determined to find the true meaning of Christmas at the Riverside or finding the true meaning of Christmas is the furthest thing from your mind at the Back Room @ Colectivo, Milwaukee has got you covered.
