“Sorry to those who thought they bought a ticket to a normal comedy show,” Sarah Matthes said at the start of a recent PUPA storytelling show. “You actually came to something a lot more elevated.”
Matthes, a poetry professor at UT Austin, started the PUPA last October. During the weekly show at East Austin Comedy Club, performers present 5-minute-long personal stories based on a theme.
Because it’s a comedy club, Matthes said, people expect to laugh, and there are often comedic stories.
“But it’s supposed to be a place of experimentation,” she said. ”I'd love it if we had a devastating story. I'm ready for someone to move us to tears.”
The name of the show is a riff off The Moth, a long-standing live storytelling show.
“Imagine you wrap yourself up in a chrysalis, and then your whole body dissolves into soup—and the soup stage, that's the PUPA,” Matthes said. “That's where we are. We're in this transitional moment.”
The PUPA features hired performers — at this show, there were six, including Matthes — but also allows audience members to come up and share their stories.
“It's really cool to watch the kind of practiced storyteller, a comedian type, in contrast to the people that don't practice the story and see what works naturally and what works in a crafted way,” audience member Colleen Nothern said. “It's kind of a cool comparison project.”
There are nights when the audience members perform better than the comics, Matthes said.
“That just really is a testament to what storytelling is about,” she said. “It's accessible to everybody, and the more that you can really tap into something that's honest and less performed or created, the more that people will connect with you and be willing to laugh or cry.”
This week’s theme was boats.
In Matthes’ opening set, she spoke about her experience falling 60 feet from the rigging of a tall ship.
“A time where I, if you can believe it or not, was met with some physical peril,” Matthes said as she gestured to her cast. She broke her leg in a motorcycle crash a couple weeks earlier.
Three audience members went up to the 3-by-3-foot stage: a 65-year-old female comic, a young woman and a man in his 40s. Each person offered a contrasting perspective and storytelling style — a childhood memory of getting stranded on a small island, quick anecdotes of shrimp allergies and flipping canoes, and a long-winded tale about a friend’s midlife crisis.
“It is important to have different viewpoints represented, like people who aren't going to be telling the same sort of version of a story,” Matthes said.
Alex Olinger, a local comedian, told a story about his dead uncle’s boat bursting into flames.
“It is nice to have people be like, ‘Oh my god, your uncle died,’ and have them actually be sad,” he said after the show. “Sometimes you'd be like, ‘My uncle died’ to people [at a show], and they're just not even paying attention.”
"It's so small, you know, it's almost like you're at someone's kitchen table having dinner with them, and they're telling a story.”Kelsey Blackburn, audience member
He said the PUPA has a different energy than other shows in Austin.
“They're the nicest audience of all time,” Olinger said. “I can feel y'all smiling.”
He said the audiences in downtown Austin are a dice roll.
“It's a lot of either drunk degenerates or frat dudes on vacation,” Olinger said. “[The PUPA] is just a different thing. It’s thoughtful people that are like, ‘I would like to listen to your detailed story.’”
Matthes said she’s always found herself at the crossroads of writing and performance. She grew up doing theater and is a published poet.
“Poetry, although I love it so much, it's pretty inaccessible to a lot of people,” she said. “Storytelling is very accessible. And I just think the more accessible you can get, and the more people you can get involved, the better.”
Audience member Kelsey Blackburn said the PUPA is a connective experience.
“There's a witnessing element to it that I think is really vulnerable, and I like that,” she said. “It's so small, you know, it's almost like you're at someone's kitchen table having dinner with them, and they're telling a story.”
Matthes said she would love more audience participation – whether that’s sharing stories, suggesting topics or simply coming to the show.
“I want this space to just be where that sort of first ignition happens, that first spark where you get to say words in a room to people who are listening and get to experience that for yourself,” she said. “If there are more folks that are rising from their seats to get on stage, then I'll make space for them to do it.”
The PUPA storytelling show takes place most Wednesdays at East Austin Comedy Club. Tickets cost $10. You can find out the next theme on the show's Instagram page.
