In the world of teen angst it's hard to top James Dean in the classic film, "Rebel Without a Cause."
"I don't know what to do anymore," says Dean's misfit teen character, Jim Stark, "Except maybe die."
David Nadelberg created the Mortified experience, including one of the books "Love Is a Battlefield."
That's high drama, but it's not so different from the rants, musings and observations that can be seen on getmortified.com, an offshoot of an experimental theater program in which people reveal the most embarrassing moments of their teenage past.
The teenage themes are what you'd expect: sex, insecurity, betrayal and friendships. But the perspectives are hilariously incongruent coming from the mouths of adults.
"She wants it. I want to give it to her. But what is 'it'," says a man at one performance.
"I feel suicidal and sorry but at the same time, Dana is a major [expletive]. I hate life," says another participant.
At "Mortified" nothing (or everything) is sacred, even old prom pictures.
"Our agenda is to find the story buried in people's lives," says Mortified creator David Nadelberg. "We will try and find the stories that are hidden as kids and put them on stage."
Nadelberg came up with idea quite by accident.
"I found an old love letter that I'd written to a girl and it was really embarrassing and atrocious," Nadelberg says. "I set out to find if other people had written equally horrible love letters and journals and bad poetry back when they were kids too and had the inclination to make it public."
That was five years ago. Since then, Nadelberg and co-producer Neil Katcher have organized sold-old performances in nine cities around the country. The show's content has been compiled into two books. And Nadelberg and Katcher have turned to the web to create a larger and more vibrant social network, using their site to organize performances and recruit participants. They are also presenting multimedia content on what they call the Mortified Shoebox Show.
David Nadelberg and Neil Katcher co-produce "Mortified."
Why do participants bring up painful memories for others to laugh at? For Matt Harawitz, a writer and comedian, the answer is simple. "I think it's a catharsis to be able to laugh at yourself and then laugh at what you used to be. It feels great."
Harawitz tells me this in the bathroom of the King King nightclub in Hollywood, where Mortified is to be performed. The bathroom is an appropriate locale for an interview, he says, because it is the kind of place so many teen misfits like him ended up getting their heads swirled in the toilet by high school bullies.
Later on, Harawitz steps up to the microphone in a packed house of several hundred people. Holding a bound, brown book in his hands, he lays it on the line: "This is my diary. I wish it were a journal, but it's a diary," he says to uproarious laughter.
"It's a shedding of our inner dork," says Nadelberg, "it's a casting off of who we once were and owning it."
Mortified participant Masha Tivyan has no shortage of teen angst to recall. Her teenage journal is filled with the kind of salty language you'd expect from a sailor. But with her diminutive size and deadpan delivery she brings down the house at the King King as she reads her observations of a camping trip when she was 14 years old.
Adolescent idols like Kirk Cameron sometimes play a role in the Mortified experience.
"Well our trail trip is almost over. I guess i'm ready to eat some large non-stop dosages of kick ass food," Tivyan pauses for laughter, then continues reading onstage at the King King. "...Mickey D's, shrimp at Red Lobster...etc." More laughter, and then her coup de grace. "The mixed abilities group hasn't caught up yet — like they're gonna!"
Tivyan says her parents' broken marriage fueled her childhood journal writing-and her foul language.
"I felt a lot of hostility as a child and it's carried me through into my adult life," Tivyan says with a wry smile after her performance.
"It's a lot like therapy," says Mortified co-producer Neil Katcher, who is also responsible for direction the live performance, "And not only do the people get transformed because they get to get some distance from their childhood, but we get transformed as well."
- Producer: Erin Green
- Video Editor: Didrik Johnck
- "Mortified" footage provided by: David Nadleberg and Neil Katcher
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