TRACEY SEGARRA: And so I pick up the tent card, and inside, it reads, "Will you marry me?"

And I think, "Not bad."

(audience laughs) BOBBY STODDARD: It becomes really clear that Mickey really likes my wife.

You can tell this because monkeys don't wear pants.

(audience laughs) NICK HORNEDO: I came up with a different way of ending things with Ellie.

I made her a breakup video.

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "In the Name of Love."

Love doesn't wait for the right time and it certainly doesn't ask us if we are ready.

Love will have us leaping before we can think to look.

It will have us saying "yes" before we ask "how?"

And sometimes, it has us ignoring every red flag that is waving in the wind.

Tonight's storytellers are sharing these moments from their life where passion took over their sense of reason and they followed their hearts, consequences be damned.

♪ ♪ SEGARRA: My name is Tracey Segarra, I live in New York, and I am a storyteller, or story coach, and also a senior communications officer for an international nonprofit.

And I understand that your career began as a reporter, so you were telling other people's stories.

When did you realize that you had your own story to tell?

SEGARRA: When I first started listening to storytelling shows on the radio, and I realized, "Oh, my goodness, "all these things that happened to me in my life, they can be stories."

And when it's your story that you're going to be sharing, what kind of story do you like to tell best?

You know, usually my stories have an element of humor in them, but there's always, you know, some vulnerability or sadness that have shaped who I am.

Can you talk a bit more about the role of humor in the stories that you like to tell, and why it's there?

Well, my father was a comedian.

He was a comedian in the Borscht Belt back in the day, back in the 1940s.

You know, I grew up in a family of five kids, so being able to make someone laugh, that was kind of powerful.

♪ ♪ It's January of 1996.

I am 33 years old, and I am so close to getting what I want more than anything else in the world.

So I give my boyfriend of almost two years an ultimatum.

He's got to propose to me by my birthday in October, or we are through.

(audience laughs) Now, it's not just that my biological clock is ticking, although I'm in my mid-30s and it is getting quite loud.

It's that I just don't have much faith in happily-ever-afters.

Now, part of this I blame on my father, who left my mother after 33 years of marriage.

But I also blame seventh grade.

(audience laughs) A boy passes me a note on a Friday afternoon asking me to be his girlfriend.

No boy has shown any interest in me before, so of course, the answer is going to be yes.

But I still spend the entire weekend composing just the perfect note and the perfect response.

And on Monday, I hand him the note.

And over the next three days, he ignores me.

(audience laughs) But the next day, while I'm between classes in the hallways, one of his friends yells out to me, "Hey, Tracey, that note was just a joke.

It wasn't real."

So naturally, I spend the rest of my young adulthood just not trusting men in the least, and also believing that if I'm going to have a happily-ever-after, I'm going to have to somehow engineer it myself.

So, thus the ultimatum.

Now, for many reasons, I know that this is the guy I want to marry.

Before we even go out on a date, he lets me eat french fries off of his plate.

(audience laughs) When I'm sad, and I ask him to say something nice, he says, "Pudding."

(audience laughs) Pudding is nice.

(audience laughs) And neither of us has any interest whatsoever in major-league sports.

So, a match made in heaven, right?

There was a hitch, though, because he has been married before.

It was a very brief marriage, a very unhappy marriage, and it ended badly.

So he is a bit gun-shy and not all that excited about reentering into holy matrimony.

In fact, early on in our relationship, he sits me down and he says, "You know, Tracey, "I'm not sure if this relationship is going to work out."

And I hold my breath, wondering what he's going to say next.

And he says, "It's like... It's like you're the first applicant."

(audience laughs) Like a job applicant?

That has to be the most unromantic thing I've ever heard, but somehow also endearing.

And whatever it is, I know he's the one I want to marry.

So another thing you need to know about me is, not only am I a control freak who is trying to engineer my own marriage proposal, but I am also a hopeless romantic, and I want it to be a surprise, I want a grand gesture.

(audience laughs) I want people all around watching me being proposed to.

So, yes, it's a tall order.

But I have faith in him-- he can do this.

The next month is February.

He makes plans for us to go out to a restaurant on Valentine's Day.

And I'm all excited at work.

And then I get a call from him, and he says he's had a terrible accident at work.

He's a graphic artist, a wonderful artist, and he has cut his finger so badly that he's spent half the day at the emergency room.

But he promises me he'll meet me at the restaurant.

And when I hang up, all I can think is, "Is this somehow part of a proposal?"

(audience laughs) When I get to the restaurant, he is holding his bandaged finger up like this.

The entire meal, he is grimacing in pain.

But between the appetizers and the tiramisu, there's still a part of me that thinks he's going to ask me to marry him.

It does not happen.

Next month, it's March.

Now, I do want this to be a surprise, but that doesn't stop me from looking over my shoulder occasionally to see if there are rose petals where rose petals shouldn't be, or family members lurking in a hallway somewhere.

(audience laughs) March passes.

April, no proposal.

May, June, nothing.

It's July.

We go to the beach.

I look for skywriting.

(audience laughs) Wait, there is skywriting!

The first letter, T!

T... "Tan, don't burn-- Coppertone."

(audience laughs) It's August-- we love to go fishing in those party boats out east on Long Island.

And I half expect him to pull a ring out of that flounder's mouth.

(audience laughs) He does not.

Now it's September-- what is he waiting for?

Is he having second thoughts?

What is going on?

Finally, in October, he makes plans for us to go out to this very expensive restaurant in Greenwich Village that neither of us can afford on my birthday.

So obviously, he's going to propose.

And this is what I'm thinking.

"Lame.

"Boring.

Restaurant proposal-- not what I asked for."

(audience laughs) And, you know, I try to tell myself, "Tracey, calm down.

"You are getting what you want.

You are marrying the man you love."

When I get to the restaurant, he's already there.

And I sit down at the table, and there's this tent card on the table.

In beautiful calligraphy, it says, "Tonight's special."

And I figure, "Well, if I'm not going to get this grand proposal, I'm going to order something expensive to eat."

(audience laughs) And so I pick up the tent card, and inside, it reads, also in beautiful calligraphy, "Tracey Miller, will you marry me?"

(audience coos) And I think, "Not bad."

(audience laughs) "Not skywriting, but not bad."

And I look over at this man, who's looking at me across the table with love, who is asking me to spend the rest of my life with him.

And this is the moment.

This is the moment where I just let go of all my fears and insecurities.

And I turn to him and I say, "No, you're doing it wrong.

You need to get down on one knee."

(audience laughs) And so he gets down on one knee, and now he is pleading, "Tracey, will you marry me?"

And before I say anything, I look all around me to see who else in the restaurant is watching me getting proposed to.

And nobody notices.

(audience laughs, groans) When I think back to that time, I kind of cringe at what a crazy woman I was.

But, you know, I also comfort myself with the knowledge that despite being the first and only applicant... (audience laughs) ...I got the job.

(audience laughs and applauds) Thank you.

(audience applauding) ♪ ♪ STODDARD: My name is Bobby Stoddard and I live in Vermont.

I am a builder and, um, a father, husband, um, and I like to play around in the snow.

Can you tell me a little bit about how you found your way into storytelling?

I got pretty lucky.

I have a lot of childhood friends who... We argue for sport, you know, and it was always about, like, one-upping and appreciating when you got one-upped.

And I, sort of, the storytelling came out of that with my friends, because when we weren't arguing, we were, like, telling each other stories, and you always wanted to tell the biggest, best, awesomest story.

(Okokon chuckles) So, what kind of stories do you like to tell the most?

I feel like I've had, like, a very lucky and charmed life.

So I'm always looking for ways that maybe I'm not as charmed as I think I am.

I'm not, like, intentionally trying to be self-deprecating, but I do like to find, like, the struggles, where things aren't going right for me.

♪ ♪ So, about 19 years ago, my wife and I were on our honeymoon, and we were backpacking around Panama, and we were kind of checking boxes.

You know, we built our own house, we got married, we're on our honeymoon, and we're hoping to start a family.

And it'd be pretty fun to do that on our honeymoon.

And we were using the often method... (audience laughs) ...of conceiving.

(audience laughing) So, uh, she, she found this place for us to go stay at.

It's called Mono Feliz, which means "happy monkey."

And it was a... It was, like, an unsanctioned monkey sanctuary.

This sort of wacky hippie expat crashed his boat into the shore, and there was a "for sale" sign, and he saw a monkey.

And it all seemed like fate.

(audience laughs) So he just, like, said, "This is a monkey sanctuary."

He bought the land.

And to get there, you get in the back of a rickety pickup truck, and at low tide, you drive for an hour and a half.

And then eventually, the truck, like, turns up into the jungle, and the truck driver says, you know, "That's your path.

Just walk down that path."

And he drives away-- we're in the middle of nowhere.

And so we walk into the jungle, and we go 100 feet, and... There's a monkey, like, right at eye level, you know, a little tiny monkey.

It was a squirrel monkey.

That's the one with the little widow's peak and the pointy little ears.

And this one was particularly small, because he was a teenager.

(audience laughs) And he's at eye level, and we sort of sidle up to him, and he doesn't care.

He's sitting there, he's eating this thing, looks like a little cigar, like Bugs Bunny, just looking at us.

And we get right there, like, we could almost touch him.

He drops to the ground, he tosses his cigar, and he climbs up onto my wife's shoulder.

(audience laughs) And, like, now we have a monkey.

(audience laughs) And we're... He's just sitting there, and we just start walking through the jungle.

And I can't even believe it, because, like, I mean, I'm guessing almost everyone here at some point dreamed of having a pet monkey.

(audience laughs) And he's sitting on my shoulder, and I'm kind of, like, put my shoulder, like, I can't wait for him to get on my shoulder.

But he's not super-interested in that yet.

Every once in a while, he'll jump off and, like, leap up and catch a, a moth and, like, roll it into a little cigar.

That's what the cigar was, it was a... It was a rolled-up moth.

So, we walk for about 15 minutes, and we come to this open-air, uh, like, kitchen, and there is our host, Juancho, the expat.

And he's, like, "Oh, I see you met Mickey!"

And we're, like, "Yeah, what's Mickey's deal?"

And he's, like, "Well, his mother was killed, "and I took him in.

"By day, he wanders the jungle with the other monkeys, "and at night, he curls up in my cabin with me.

But let's get you settled."

Like, and he, and he takes us down to this exquisite little beach.

And the only thing on this little beach is a screened-in hut.

And this is gonna be our home for a couple of days.

And he's, like, "All right, get settled, "and Mickey and I will go up "and we'll get some lunch together, and just come up and have lunch after you get settled."

And we're, like, "Okay."

And like I said, like, we're on a mission.

(audience laughs) She's ovulating.

So we, you know, we get settled.

(audience laughs) And when we come out of the hut, there's Mickey.

(audience laughs) Jumps right up on my wife's shoulder, and we walk up to get some lunch.

And, you know, on the way, I keep, like, putting my shoulder over, like, waiting for some monkey time.

And he's not into it yet.

So we get up, we sit down, we're having lunch, and Mickey's, like, jumping down, he's catching moths, and he's sitting on my wife's shoulder, and... And at one point, he just, like, saunters across the table, and he looks down at my plate and he looks up at me.

And he takes one of my plantains and takes a bite of it, and looks at me and just tosses it on the ground.

(audience laughs) And goes back over to my wife.

(audience laughs) I'm, like, "That was odd."

So we go out and we explore the land.

We go swimming, we're checking out the jungle.

And, you know, dinnertime's coming up.

So we, you know, we go back to our hut, and we, you know, we get settled again.

(audience laughs) And then we come out, and there's Mickey.

And jumps up on my wife's shoulder, and we're walking along, and it becomes really clear that Mickey really likes my wife.

You can tell this because monkeys don't wear pants.

(audience laughs) And... (laughter continues) The, it's also very clear that he does not like me.

(audience laughs) So we get up, we get up for dinner, sit down, same kind of stuff's going on, and he saunters across the table, looks at my plate, picks up a plantain, turns around, and sits in my rice and beans.

(audience laughs, exclaims) And I'm, like, "What..." And Juancho's, like, "Oh, Mickey, you little rascal!

Get up!"

You know, "Cut it out!"

And I'm, like, "I am not eating this food."

(audience laughs) There was a naked monkey butt in my food.

(audience laughs) So Juancho scrounges up some more food for me.

And the next morning, we wake up and we do our thing.

We're, like, we get settled, we're on a mission.

(audience laughs) Come outside-- there's Mickey.

And Mickey's not wearing any pants, pretty obvious that he likes my wife, and he's, like, caressing her hair.

And he is really into my wife and into her hair.

And he gets settled in my wife's hair.

(audience laughs, groans) Yeah, yeah, it's not nice.

And she's, like, "Ugh!"

She's kind of, like... And I'm, like... (stammers) Like, I don't know what I'm... It's over, like... (audience laughs) Look, there's nothing I can really do.

(audience laughs) So, we sit down at our places, and something has changed in Mickey.

He walks over, he doesn't care about my plantains anymore.

He's looking at me, and his little razor-sharp teeth start showing.

And he's, like, I mean, he's, I mean, he's tiny, but his teeth are really sharp.

And I'm kind of freaking out.

And he jumps up on my shoulder.

And now the thing that I have been wanting so badly... (audience laughs) ...is the thing that I, I do not want at all, and he's... I can feel his little nose and his teeth, and he's making these noises-- and I don't speak monkey.

(audience laughs) But I know what he was saying.

He was saying, "Game over, my friend.

She is mine now."

(audience laughs) And I'm freaking out, I'm freak... I'm just, like, "He's gonna, like... Ebola is, this is, this is how it starts."

And I was freaking out, and he... And Juancho's, like, "Oh, Mickey, get off of there!"

You know?

And he gets off my shoulder.

And I grab my plate of food and I go and I sit outside.

And he's fine with that, and... (audience laughs) So, we have about three more meals at this place, and I had to take all my meals outside.

(audience laughs) And I'm looking inside, and there is the monkey with my new bride.

(audience laughs) I'm watching them have dinner together.

(audience laughs) But I will say, Mono Feliz was good to us.

Because just last month, my 18-year-old daughter just celebrated her birthday, and I am pretty sure she's mine.

(audience laughs) Thank you.

(audience laughing and applauding) ♪ ♪ HORNEDO: My name is Nick Hornedo, I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana, currently based in Brooklyn, New York, and I'm a stand-up comedian.

And at some point, storytelling became part of your comedy.

Can you talk a bit about what role storytelling plays in your comedy?

HORNEDO: You know, my favorite comedians are the ones who are also storytellers in their own right.

I think artistically, there's just so much more to explore if you get yourself out of a strict "setup, punch" mindset.

And I think storytelling for me is just a natural way for me to find that interesting mode to work in.

Can you talk a bit about the role that failure plays in your work and your creativity?

Coming into comedy, I was so scared of coming off as inauthentic, as not being able to share myself in a, in a way that was fair to myself, fair to anything I'm talking about.

The only way to get better is by being inauthentic, is by, by failing, by being cringe.

And the story I'm telling tonight is about being cringe.

And you just have to keep going.

If you're not failing, then you're not trying.

♪ ♪ I fell in love with Ellie when we auditioned for the school play.

Likely place for me to fall in love.

I feel like the best version of myself when I'm performing.

My most romantic, my most masculine.

Not traditional masculine, but, you know, my own version.

Like, like, my masculinity, it's less James Dean and more Snoopy when he's a pilot-- does that make sense?

(audience laughs) I was a senior and Ellie was a sophomore, but she was really mature for her age is something my friends tell me I need to stop saying.

I think I was just really impressed with how authentically herself she was, both onstage and off.

She drank black coffee.

She would call teachers by their first name.

Senior girls would go to her for relationship advice.

Meanwhile, the only relationship advice I was capable of giving was how to kiss your bedroom wall without leaving a stain.

(audience laughs) During auditions, we played two ex-lovers who run into each other at a bar, catch up, and just as they're about to reignite that spark, twist, he notices a ring on her finger, because she's engaged.

It wasn't the most uplifting scene to role-play with.

Unfortunately, there were no scenes in the school play about two teens figuring out how to do over-the-pants stuff.

(audience laughs) But we were good.

We had this natural chemistry that followed us into our relationship.

And sometimes, it felt like we never left the play.

For example, we'd spend hours a night on Skype reading scenes from Shakespeare to each other.

I know, where are the bullies when you need them?

(audience laughs) I really loved Ellie, but I think I loved the performance of love even more.

And those two didn't always mesh.

One night, we're on the phone, and out of nowhere, Ellie starts crying.

And when I ask her what's wrong, she says, "I just don't know what's going to happen after graduation."

I wish I had told her that it's not practical for us to stay together, but at least we can enjoy the time we have left.

But I didn't.

Instead, I came up with a different, more creative way of ending things with Ellie.

I made her a breakup video.

(audience laughs, groans) Okay, hear me out, I... (audience laughs) It was essentially a breakup letter that I wrote and then recorded as a voiceover, and then supplemented with clips from every movie Ellie and I ever watched together.

(audience groans) At one point in the video, I actually, um, recommend a trilogy of films that reminded me of our relationship.

You know, because nothing heals a broken heart like homework.

(audience laughs) That's not even the most embarrassing part of the video.

The most embarrassing part of the video is just the fact that it was eight minutes long, which I know sounds indulgent, but to my credit, I was just creatively on fire with this one.

(audience laughs) I mean, there was montage, there was complicated editing.

I mean, I was recording and re-recording lines under a blanket in my closet like I was Ira Glass during COVID, okay?

(audience laughs) I was feeling the craft here.

It broke my heart to end things with my best friend.

And making art out of that moment crystallized everything that was good about our relationship, everything I didn't want to leave behind.

It meant a lot to me.

And so, as I clicked export, I thought it would mean a lot to Ellie.

So we go on our last date.

We're at the spot by the river where we had our first kiss.

The sky is pink, the score of the world is coming down, and I'm taking in how picture-perfect everything is.

And that's when Ellie says, "The longer you don't say something, the less hopeful I get."

And so I do the only thing I can do.

I reach into my breast pocket, pull out an SD card... (audience laughs, groans) ...hand it to her, and say, "Hey, "there's something on here I want you to watch when you get home."

(audience laughs softly) And she says, "If you're breaking up with me through this, I'm gonna kill you!"

(audience laughs) So up to this point, I'm rethinking the whole digital breakup idea.

I mean, for one, an SD card?

(audience laughs) At least give the girl a flash drive!

And so we break up.

And I go home, and I receive a text from Ellie that just says, "I watched the video."

And I, always one for notes, I ask, "What'd you think?"

(audience laughs, groans) And she says, "I can't breathe."

Because at that moment, she was literally having a panic attack.

Two things become clear.

Number one, I should seriously consider majoring in film.

(audience laughs) Don't mean to brag, I just think I might have "it."

And number two, the important moments in relationships-- falling in love, breaking up-- those moments are collaborations.

They're moments to be present and authentic.

They're not moments to recommend three movies!

(audience laughs) I ran into Ellie a year ago in the subway.

I hadn't seen her in years.

She was with her friends and I was with mine, and we rode a few stops together.

She told me she was in law school and that she was doing well.

And at one point, my friend jumps in and says, "Wait.

Is that breakup video girl?"

(audience laughs, groans) And she's, like, "You told them about that?"

And I say, "I am so sorry."

And she goes, "No!

I mean, for your sake!

You told them about that?"

(audience laughs) And now she's telling everyone about it from her perspective, how absurd it was, and how the next day, she returned to that spot at the river and chucked the SD card over the bridge.

(audience laughs) Everyone is laughing, but all I can notice is that she has a ring on her finger, because she's engaged.

She tells me about her fiancé.

I say that I'm happy for her, and then she gets off at her stop.

And I'm just thinking to myself, "Did we just reenact the play?"

(audience laughs) From high school?

I mean, like, two ex-lovers, chance encounter-- twist!

She's betrothèd.

I really was happy for her and the arc her life had taken, but I never left the play.

I don't know if I ever will.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) ♪ ♪