‘The Monti’ asks everyone to tell their stories

When Jeff Polish started his act Saturday, it wasn’t in a restaurant where he typically performs.

Instead, it was in the Carrboro ArtsCenter, which has 355 audience seats.

But the stories weren’t any less intimate.

The act, called The Monti, encourages community members to tell stories to an audience, abiding by four rules: all stories must follow a particular theme, be true, be under twelve minutes and told without notes.

“It’s just plain, old-fashioned, simple storytelling,” said Polish, the founder of The Monti.

“All it takes is a microphone, an audience and storytellers.”

Five local artists sat one by one on a stool in dim stage light and told stories based on the night’s theme ­— “Heroes.”

The five performers took the audience on a trip through North Carolina, South America, Thomas Wolfe’s tomb, crazy families and extraordinary people.

Jazz musician Django Haskins told a story of his passionate and bold parents.

“They were like the Beatles, unable to face realities, but not afraid to keep on evolving and changing,” Haskins said.

He said his parents attempted to travel to South America on a Vespa, but instead ended up being kidnapped in Jamaica.

Author Louis Bayard said his father was a spiritually promiscuous man who would sing inappropriate Johnny Cash or Irish folk songs in a Wesleyan church, making his son wish he were dead.

Bayard said he eventually realized as a grown-up, at his dad’s funeral, that his father’s inspiring individuality made him a real hero.

Canadian writer Sophie Naima Caird described her childhood angel — her aunt, who wandered around barefoot, loved stray dogs and rotten meat and stretched naked in the morning.

“She would never let anyone hurt her feelings in any way,” Caird said.

Justin Catanoso told a story of personal failure, and at one point, he urged the audience to shout, “Asshole! Asshole!” to make him feel like he was back at his university’s talent show.

Catanoso said he had tried to impersonate Rocky Balboa but failed and faced the most humiliating experience of his life, he said.

“Rocky Balboa came back to fight again and again. And so would I,” Catanoso said.

Since its creation in April 2008, The Monti has occurred once a month in Alivia’s Durham Bistro. This was the first time the show had performed at a larger venue.

“The audience was receptive,” said Emily Ranii, the center’s theatre director, who would like to book The Monti again.

It was the first time Mike Harris, a social studies teacher at Phillips Middle School, had seen the show.

 “Storytelling is the beginning of everything,” he said.


Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.