Moth Main Stage

We are giving away five pairs of tickets for the performance on Friday May 18th, Doors open at 7:00 PM Stories start at 7:30  at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Montgomery.   Purchase Tickets

The theme is Flirting with Disaster.   The tellers are: 

Phyllis Marie Bowdwin, a Bronx-born artist, jewelry designer and griot, captures her people's stories through her writing and her art. She was a Teacher Trainer for the New York City Department of Education, Crisis Intervention Counselor for the Marble Collegiate Church, and Coordinator of Daytime Casting at ABC. Her Middle Passage Maafa brooch was featured in the Styles section of The New York Times, exhibited at the New York Historical Society and acquired for the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. She holds a B.A. from The New School and an M.A. in Education from Adelphi University. A 2013 BRIO award winner for literature, her short stories have been published in the Bronx Memoir Project and the UFT's Reflections Magazine. As a volunteer at the Neighborhood Women's Collective, she mentors and conducts life skills workshops for women and girls. Known as the Bronx Pickle, the Quiet Fire, and that nosy, trouble making #$%@&*, Phyllis is currently completing her first volume of short stories.

Natalie “Alabama” Chanin is the founder and creative director of Alabama Chanin. She has a degree in Environmental Design with a focus on industrial and craft-based textiles from North Carolina State University. After graduation, Natalie worked in the junior sportswear industry on New York’s Seventh Avenue, before moving abroad. For over a decade, Natalie worked as a stylist and costume designer, travelling the globe. In 2000, Chanin returned to her home to begin the sustainable work that has become Alabama Chanin. Since 2000, Alabama Chanin has expanded to include a family of businesses: the Alabama Chanin collection, The School of Making, The Factory Store + Café, and Building 14 Design + Manufacturing Services. All facets work together to create a collaborative community and idea exchange, healthy growth, and a love of quality goods that last. In 2013, Chanin won the CFDA/Lexus Eco-Fashion Challenge, an award competition that identifies and celebrates the greatest American designers working in the realm of sustainable fashion. Chanin continues to learn and to teach craft traditions, using them to bridge generational, economic, and cultural gaps. Chanin is also a mother of two, an avid gardener, and an enthusiastic cook from her home in Florence, Alabama.

Dylan Park was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 2004-2010, he served as a member of a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Security Forces Squadron that deployed to locations all over the world, including Iraq. After returning home, he spent a few years as a social worker for homeless veterans, and as a victims advocate for the Santa Clara County’s District Attorney’s office. In 2016, Dylan moved to Los Angeles to pursue writing, and quickly found work in AMC Network’s scripted development department as a writing fellow. Since then, he has had several scripts optioned for TV and film. Currently, he writes and directs music videos. His most recent project being a series of short music films and commercials with acclaimed musician, Wyclef Jean. On the side, he writes for VICE, where he tackles socio-politics. Dylan is a graduate of Arizona State, from which he holds degrees in Film and Media Studies, and a grad student at the University of Southern California. You can always find him with his face buried in a laptop, hiding in a cafe or bookstore somewhere in Santa Monica, the city he now calls home.

Leonard Lee Smith has been a licensed hairdresser in Birmingham, Alabama for twenty years. He holds a BA in theatre from Auburn University at Montgomery. Before becoming a hairdresser and storyteller, he was a costumer at the Alabama Ballet, the Texas Shakespeare Festival and The Alabama Shakespeare Festival. He was an Americorps volunteer with Birmingham AIDS outreach. He is a recipient of the 2012 Hackney Award for short fiction. He learned about storytelling in the Southern tradition of listening to his grandmother, Ray Ceil; a woman with a photographic memory and a razor-sharp wit, who was always telling stories. Lee's stories are heartfelt and humorous. They include his own stories, those of his grandmothers’ and those gathered while giving people one of the most important tools needed to get through life, a good hairstyle.

Michelle Browder, a Montgomeryite who runs More than Tours.