Storytelling event series and New York-based nonprofit organization The Moth will present “Crack Up: Stories of Comedy and Calamity” at the Power Center on Thursday as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. Five storytellers will share 10-minute stories that fit the “overarching theme,” Michigan Radio Marketing Director Steve Chrypinski says, “but it will run the gamut depending on who the story teller is.”

There is no way to know what stories the five stars of the show will tell. They have been instructed to remain tight-lipped about their stories to maintain a little mystery and suspense. However, if the storytellers follow the show’s intended themes—comedy and calamity—then the stories “will focus on the humor in horror, comedies or error and the search for wit amidst the rubble of disaster.”

“It’s gonna be a surprise to all of us, but we are sure it’s going to be entertaining. It’s going to be an adventure,” Chrypinski says.

Storytellers include local University of Michigan School of Art & Design associate professor, writer, and performer Holly Hughes. She is well-known for her bold feminist and lesbian performance art, which served a central role in the culture wars over art in the early 1990s. As a professor at U-M, Hughes helped establish Ann Arbor’s annual puppet and kinetic art parade FestiFools.

Also in the show:

• Former professional blackjack player and card counter Josh Axelrad. He wrote the memoir "Repeat Until Rich: A Professional Card Counter’s Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars."

• Allison Downey, an associate professor of theatre and education at Western Michigan University, is a singer-songwriter, theater artist, and writer. She recently took a sabbatical in NYC to attend and research storytelling events like The Moth storySLAMs.

• Mark Katz, who has worked in politics, journalism, and comedy. Among his many experiences, he wrote humorous speeches for President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. He currently runs his humor-oriented creative consulting business The Soundbite Institute out of New York.

• Jeffrey Solomon, the co-artistic director of Houses on the Moon Theater Company in New York and an award-winning playwright, and he received an Emmy nomination for writing for Jim Henson’s mid-90s Saturday morning TV show CityKids.

The show is hosted by comedian Rudy Rush who has appeared in his own half-hour special on Comedy Central, "Def Comedy Jam," "Premium Blend," and "The Late Show with David Letterman." Rush also holds the record for being the youngest person to host Showtime at the Apollo.

The Moth is a nonprofit arts organization that holds “Moth storySLAMs” and other storytelling events in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Folks over at Michigan Radio, which airs the nonprofit group’s “The Moth Radio Hour” every Saturday at 3 p.m., thought it would be a treat for Michigan listeners to get a couple of chances to see The Moth performed live.

“We’ve gotten a tremendous amount of feedback from people who love the radio program. We wanted to bring the show to town and do a live version,” Chrypinski explains. According to him, the stories in the show “usually have humor in them, but not all Moth stories are funny. They can be very touching or poignant, and they could certainly have both sad or funny elements in them.”

Hughes is not giving anything away about her story. She thinks keeping it quiet “is part of the Moth experience.” The point is “to keep it as live and as close to the conversational nature of storytelling as possible rather than something that is as tightly scripted as theater or stand-up,” she says.

Hughes listens to the radio show. “I download the podcasts and enjoy them. Of course, this is very closely related to what I do, autobiographical monologues,” she says.

Hughes first participated in a live performance of The Moth “in the late 1990s in New York City, where it started,” she recalls. She thinks joining up with The Moth for the main-stage performances (in Grand Rapids as well as Ann Arbor) “will be like joining the circus...the story circus,” she says.