When Juliet Hope Wayne first tried storytelling onstage, the thought of it made her sick.
“I put my name in a hat and I left,” she recounts of her initial dip into the popular open-mic event known as The Moth. “I went to a Japanese restaurant next door and I threw up.”
She worked up the strength to walk back into the club, was called up as the last performer of the evening and won.
“It was as if God was lining it up for me, saying ‘C’mon, get your s— together. Here’s this thing you can do.’”
That telling true-life tales would activate her gag reflex is only appropriate, as the hilarious yarns she weaves have the potential to do the same for audiences.
Her story from the “Risk!” podcast earlier this year will certainly make listeners reconsider the hygienic traits of people with false teeth.
Wayne’s narrative is a mixture of heartbreaking naivety and hardened depravity, with the most jaw-dropping anecdotes coming from her years of substance abuse.
“A lot of it is things that happened years ago,” she says, “and I end up going over them and realizing what a jerk I was.”
Tonight she talks about getting dumped while at work and how she turned it into an unlikely revenue stream.
