On this Valentine's Day, two stories about timeless love. Love that lasts a lifetime, and love that ends after a few days. This episode is hosted by Kate Tellers. Storytellers: Tate Russell encounters some drama in high school drama. Steve Glickman deals with his parents after moving back in with them. Podcast # 906 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What stories are featured in this Valentine's Day episode?
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Kate Tellers, and on this episode, timeless love. To celebrate Valentine's Day, we'll be exploring first loves and last loves. Loves that last a lifetime and loves that fade away after a few days. Our first story is about first love. Tate Russell told this at a Twin Cities Grand Slam where the theme of the night was crash course. Here's Tate live at the Moth.
Chapter 2: How did Tate Russell handle high school drama with his ex?
It is the most exciting day for any theater kid. And that's the day when the cast list for the High School Musical comes out. I get out of my first hour class, I rush on over to the music room, I take a look at that cast list and I see that the worst possible scenario has happened. I see my name right at the top of that list.
I've been cast as the gregarious confidence trickster Harold Hill, the lead in The Music Man. But that's not the bad part. Right underneath my name, next to Marion Peru, the love interest, is the name of my ex-girlfriend. My mother actually knew about this casting decision before I did. She was one of the directors on the show.
But she had removed herself from the casting process when it came to my ex and me. And at that point, I kind of wished that she hadn't, because my ex and I were on bad terms. She did not want to interact with me, and she made sure that I knew that. And I was having a really hard time coping with that reality.
She was a senior, I was a junior, we had been friends since middle school, and I didn't want to get back together with her at this point. In fact, I was with somebody else at the time, but I just couldn't fathom the possibility that she would go off to college and we would be on bad terms and never talk again.
And it didn't help that now I knew for the next three months I would be seeing her every single day, and every rehearsal I would try and seduce her as part of a long con, and each performance would culminate with a shared on-stage kiss. And so realizing this, standing in front of the cast list, I realized I needed to text her, and I did. I said something like, oof. And...
I said, like, we need to work past some things, I guess. And she did not respond. But we started the rehearsal process, and the most amazing thing happened. We actually started getting along. We were hanging out. And by hanging out, I mean rehearsing. And we were talking to one another again. And by talking to one another, I mean running lines.
And we even choreographed our own dance to the song Marian the Librarian, which turned out really well. It was one of my favorite parts of the entire show. And throughout this whole process, I was just really grateful that we seemed to be getting past this animosity that we once had.
And so shortly before one of our performances, I went up to her and I said, like, hey, I've been having a really great time working with you on this show, and I really hope that after this we can continue to be on good terms and maybe even be friends. And she basically said, I don't think that's a good idea. And I couldn't handle that.
I broke down crying minutes before our show was scheduled to go up And I just sort of hunkered down in a corner backstage. And my mom, who was still a director on the show at this time, sees me having a really rough time and she comes over to me. And my mom has always been really kind and supporting of all of my performances. And she sees me crying and she says,
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Chapter 3: What was the outcome of Tate Russell's theater experience?
The run of our shows ended, and she and I went back to not talking, not hanging out, not running lines, not rehearsing together. And I slowly realized that no matter how well we worked together in that show, we were really never going to be close again after that. We were better actors than we were friends. Thank you.
That was Tate Russell. Tate is an admission counselor at Case Western Reserve University, singer with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and the proud holder of an 1,800-day streak on Duolingo. He also founded his own storytelling club, Off the Cuff, during his undergraduate years at Carleton College. We were curious to see if Tate and his ex ever reconnected after their Music Man performance.
Tate said that this show was actually the second time that she and I had played opposite of one another as exes. We had done Annie together, where she played Annie and I played Mr. Warbucks, a story for another time. After the Music Man, we did go our separate ways and never really reconnected post-graduation.
I continue to do theater, and I'm happy to say that since then, I have had no romantic history with any of my onstage partners. We wanted to hear from you about the first time you fell in love. So, inspired by the prompt slips we give out at our Story Slams, we sent out a request on social media for super short stories about the first time you fell in love.
Here are some of our favorites, along with some memories from the Moth staff.
When I was 14 years old, I set my eyes on my friend's older brother, who looked just like Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that was sort of it for me. I was smitten.
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Chapter 4: How do listeners describe their first experiences of love?
At 16, I fell for a dashing German exchange student. Although our subsequent long distance odd hours AOL instant messenger relationship didn't pan out, it did spark a lifelong love of foreign language, travel, and finding familiarity and love in different cultures.
Not romantic love, but the moment I saw my baby sister in my mother's hospital bed. She was so small and so pink, and I was filled with more love than my seven-year-old heart knew how to deal with.
My first love was a childhood friend that I grew up with. Our parents were friends, and although it never bloomed into anything, we shared Italian ice under the canopy of a tree-covered park on dusty red soil in the summer heat on my sixth birthday in Italy. And I still remember that day 42 years later.
So for my eighth birthday, my parents took me to see my first Broadway show. It was musical Oliver and the lead was this actress singer by the name of George Brown. And I was smitten. And I swore during the curtain call that she was looking right at me. And I dreamt about her for weeks.
If you're wondering about my first love, I'll tell you about my first reciprocal love. We were in college, very innocent, and we loved each other very much. We were so uncomfortable talking about our feelings to each other that we took to writing in a journal that we passed back and forth to each other when we were together.
Unfortunately, ultimately he realized that he was more attracted to men than he was to me and went on to marry a man, as did I. Despite all of this, he performed my wedding as well as my sister's and my father's second wedding. And we both consider each other to be one of the great love stories of our lives.
If you'd like to tell your own story, either on stage or via a slip, you can always go to one of our story slams. Check out themoth.org slash events to find one of them near you. You can also always follow us on social media. We're on TikTok and Instagram at Moth Stories. We'll be back in a second with another story about love.
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