Quality of story and performance

The quality of the story and performance is something that Randy and Lance didn’t seem to find very important. Randy thought that unpolished performances were better:

If you have a whole show of those [polished performers]

people go away

unmoved.

They may go away

impressed.

But we all know we've been in many

circumstances where people were impressed

by people who don't particularly move us.

And Lance felt that “performances” weren’t genuine:

And that was one thing we did not want.

We didn't want

performances.

We wanted people to be genuine.

So,

one of the things was

keeping that genuine feel.

But Joyce kind of wanted those polished stories that you hear on The Moth. She even described them as “transcending.” She talked about how having a true open mic, that’s not always what you get:

We just said

the hat's there.

People will just show up and they'll tell stories

and they'll be amazing [laughs]

like they do in The Moth.

We realized

that was a little

naive because

people do show up

and they do put their names in the hat

and they do tell great stories.

It takes a little bit of time and effort before those stories

transcend and become the thing that you associate The Moth with.

She said, though, that there are people who tell a really good story (and do a good job of performing?) without preparation, and indicates that these performances are better for not being overly polished:

What has been surprising about it?

It happens

a good bit

where people will show up and do an amazing job.

The polished version pales in comparison.