Micaela Blei didn’t have a story prepared when her name was drawn first at an open mic slam five years ago. She had only planned to go to provide moral support for her friend who hoped to win the chance to tell her story. So, in front of around 300 people, she walked up to the stage, completely unprepared, and mustered up the best story she could with such short notice.

In her words, it was “terrible,” but by then she was already hooked on “The Moth.”

Blei, along with four others, will be storytelling at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign as a part of “The Moth Mainstage.” Tickets range from $19.50 to $39.50 depending on the seat.

Senior Producer Meg Bowles said the show’s theme is “intrepid,” meaning each of the stories being presented will have a lot of, in her words, “hutzpah” and focus on courage.

“The Moth” was founded in New York in 1997 by George Dawes Green. It is an organization dedicated to the art of storytelling, and has presented over 20,000 true stories since then. The organization is comprised of several different programs including, but not limited to, “The Moth Radio Hour,” a weekly online podcast; “The Moth StorySLAM Program,” the event that Blei participated in, where people compete in an open mic night of storytelling; and “The Moth Mainstage,” which features select storytellers who were chosen by and work with directors to perform their stories on tour.

In the show this Saturday, the storytellers featured include Blei, David Montgomery, Victor Levenstein, Ali Al Abdullati and Jill Morganthaler. Each will present a 10 to 12-minute story having to do with the theme of the night.

Bowles said she was particularly fascinated with Levenstein’s story. Now 94 years old, Levenstein was arrested by the KGB when he was 20 and accused of plotting to kill Josef Stalin. She found him after one of his friends called the program and suggested they talk to him.

Other topics of the night include Abdullati’s account of how a stranger accused him of being a terrorist, Montgomery’s tale of how he quit his job to follow the Spice Girls Reunion tour and Blei’s story of her time as a third-grade teacher.

As a Senior Producer, it is Bowles’ job to find people with stories and help these people develop them and eventually tell them in front of an audience. She said coming from a background in journalism, “the idea of finding an interesting person with an interesting life story really resonated with me.”

She and other directors work with people to edit and fine-tune their stories to craft them for audiences. Each of the storytellers performing this Saturday has been working to develop and perfect their stories for the upcoming show.

Since she began working with “The Moth” in 1997, Bowles has found stories from many different backgrounds. She has worked as a speech writer for former president Barack Obama, an elderly lady from New Orleans with a famous gumbo recipe and even an astronaut. The majority of people featured, however, are just ordinary humans.

One of her favorite stories comes from a survivor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. The man, she said, worked as an engineer on the plant and witnessed the nuclear accident firsthand.

“After that happened he was sent into post-traumatic stress and became very depressed,” she said. “He stopped celebrating Christmas and the holidays that he loved. He’d just sit in his chair and stare and time would just fly by. But something about working on the story and getting up an telling 1,000 people, which is what he did, was incredibly healing for him.”

This, she says, is what sets “The Moth” apart from other shows. The people telling their stories are not performers, and the audience sees they are just human beings. She said the audience “really wants this person to do well,” which creates a “beautiful energy in the room.”

Blei said the same of the audience. One of her stories is about a terrible trip to Italy where she was feeling self conscious about how she looked.

“It was actually a super painful summer,” she said. “I tell a story about it now that’s partly very serious and sad and partly really funny. Part of why I do it is to have it shared with other people, and share it literally, not just sharing the story, but sharing the pain a little bit. [The audience] is helping me and holding me up.”

Blei is also the cofounder of “The Moth High School StorySLAM Program,” where the organization goes to high schools and helps students develop their own stories to be told. Often, she has found that these experiences are the first time students have been able to talk without being interrupted.

“The Moth” stresses the importance of stories and being able to tell them. Bowles said the experience is often very empowering for people because they often don’t think their stories are important compared to others’.

Rae’Vonne Barnes, freshman in LAS, has listened to “The Moth” stories for over half of her lifetime. She enjoys “The Moth” because of the connections she feels to the storytellers as they talk about their life.

“Every Saturday since I was seven, my father would take my siblings and I out driving and we would just listen to the stories from ‘The Moth Radio Hour,’” she said. “I love hearing the stories. It’s as though by listening to happenings in their lives, I get to know the storyteller without actually interacting with them. And it’s strange, but it’s a comforting experience.”

[email protected]