Park Slope bar-goers: get ready to spill your guts.
Competitive storytelling — yes, storytelling — is headed to Union Hall tonight, where a gaggle of griots will turn their real-life successes and failures into a live non-fiction feature called the Moth StorySLAM.
The true story contest will pit 10 brave Brooklynites in a battle to see who can tell the best tale (at least as far as the audience and judges are concerned).
The stand-up performance — which is an offshoot of a popular Manhattan series that has featured Lewis Black, Janeane Garofalo, Margaret Cho and George Plimpton — will only be the fourth Moth event in the borough.
The night’s stories will deal with the theme of deadlines.
“We like to have very open-ended themes, that way it allows the most people to enter,” said Moth Program Manager Marianne Gadeberg.
It doesn’t matter whether the storytellers use comedy or drama to tell their tales — so long as they don’t use notes, their narratives are true, and their stories take five minutes or less.
But Gadeberg has one piece of advice for nascent narrators: practice.
“The people who are very good really do prepare a lot before they go on stage,” she said.
Moth StorySLAM, Jan. 5, at Union Hall [702 Union Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Park Slope, (718) 638-4400], 7:30 pm. Tickets, $6. For info, visit www.themoth.org.
