Welcome to the Moth podcast. I'm Mark Solinger, your host for this episode.

The first play I remember seeing was The Woman in Black.

If you don't know the Woman in Black, it's a horror play about a ghost who, well, I don't want to spoil it,

but suffice it to say that 11-year-old me was scared out of my mind.

Something about the fact that you were mere feet away from the actors,

that you were all part of this magic trick of pretend and wonder,

there was nothing like it.

From that moment on, I was enchanted.

At The Moth, we know a thing or two about stories on stage.

And this episode, we're moving to The Theater, with two stories demonstrating why the play

is, in fact, still the thing.

First up is Rose L, who told this at one of our open mic story slams in Houston.

Here's Rose, live at the month.

Forgive me, Father, for I will sin.

I was one of those lucky millennial kids whose mom told me that I could do anything I wanted as long as I set my mind to it. But she qualified it. She said, I can do anything I wanted as long as I use the gifts that God has given me and I persevere.

And I took her quite literally and as a wise woman. So in the fourth grade at age nine, I knew that I could achieve my goal of getting the lead role in the play that the

fourth graders put on every year I knew that if I worked hard enough and I showed

the teachers that I deserve the role that I would get to play Jesus Christ in

holy crosses or addition of the passion play that year I had started my campaign early in the fall, way before Palm Sunday.

No student prayed harder than me, no one sang louder than me in church to show the teachers

that I had the piety requisite to play that cherished role. I was a solid student, and I had practiced in the mirror so many times the various ways that I would say Jesus' final words,

Into thy hands, I commend my spirit.

...