Did you keep a diary in middle school or high school? Or a journal, if you’re a dude or especially artsy? Do you remember what you wrote? Would you share it with a few hundred strangers?
A few weekends ago I went with a few friends to one of my favorite live events—Mortified! People get on stage and do the unthinkable: they read from their middle school and high school diaries, or poems, or songs, or raps, or whatever is most amazingly terrible. They work with producers beforehand to choose the best entries to read, and to form a bit of a storyline. They read it with no apologies, no irony, just “God-given awkwardness.” I love how honest and terrible and wonderful it is.
I also love that the audience is wholly, 100% with the readers as they share their most embarrassing moments and deepest darkest thoughts—because we’ve all been there. We all had unrequited loves, we all struggled to find our place in the grand scheme of things, we all disagreed with our parents and teachers, we all thought we were wayyy smarter and more insightful and cleverer than anyone around us. Our thoughts and feelings were new and revolutionary and world-ending, and we were alone in thinking and feeling the way we thought and felt. So so alone.
But, with the benefit of hindsight and a decade or so of growing up, listening to our younger selves we find that we weren’t so very clever or original. Or maybe we were, but not in the ground-shattering way we thought—more in a “I can’t believe a 14-year-old would write like this” kind of way. But we were truthful, and honest, at least when talking to our most secret selves, without the sheen of irony or self-deprecation under the guise of “I’ll make fun of myself before you can!” which really means “Please love me!” And, as it turns out, we weren’t alone at all. When these brave few bare their teenage souls in front of a packed house, the result is overwhelmingly supportive. In the moment that some particularly poignant secret is revealed, the audience shouts “Yeah!! Yes! Wooo!!” They cheer when the main character gets the girl, or the guy, or gets any small victory.
Yes, there’s laughter, but it’s with the older version on stage, a knowing “We were all such idiots” kind of laughter. And a relieved “We all made it out alive” kind of laughter.
And maybe a sigh of “I miss that honest little weirdo.”
Basically it’s amazing, and you should go if you get a chance. There are shows all around the nation, there’s a documentary (on Netflix, Amazon instant, iTunes) which is an entertaining and touching and quick watch as well as a weekly, short podcast.
And here’s a Literally in the Bay Area moment (something ridiculous and stereotypical of California/the Bay Area that literally happened to me) at the end of the Mortified show in Oakland:
After the last laugh and round of applause, the emcee told the audience, “Thanks for coming to Mortified, if you’d like to stay for the next event, please move to the courtyard for a few minutes so they can convert this into a dance floor for Reggae Gold!!!”
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