Get Mortified in Boston

Ever dream of sharing your most embarrassing stories from your teen years with a group of complete strangers? Shake loose your fears and Get Mortified!

By Bruce Lerch

People across the country are digging through old desk drawers and dusty shoe boxes in the attic to find old diaries, journals, and anything else that might embarrass themselves from childhood in order to share them with complete strangers. Get Mortified anyone?

Mortified is the brainchild of Dave Nadelberg, a one-time struggling writer who moved from Michigan to Los Angeles in hopes of hitting the big time. Mortified is an offshoot type of comedy show where regular people get up on stage and read aloud from the pages of youth, reliving teenage tales of woe and failed loves in front of packed comedy clubs in nine cities across America and as far as Sweden.

On a trip home to Michigan in 2002, Nadelberg found himself searching through his childhood bedroom one day and dug up a love letter he once wrote to a girl while he was in high school but never sent. When he read the letter again, a wave of old memories swept over him "like a time machine."

Nadelberg took the letter back to Los Angeles and shred it with some friends, inadvertently stumbling onto a great idea - lots of people still have stuff like this lying around the house, so why not try and make a show out of reading them out loud?

"I really found it funny at first, but it was also kind of cathartic," Nadelberg said of reliving that personal letter. "I started reaching out to people, and not only did they still have things like that, the idea of reading them out loud in front of people seemed to click."

In addition to shows, the idea spawned a couple of books penned by Nadelberg: Mortified: Love is a Battlefield and Mortified: Real Words, Real People, Real Pathetic; as well as the Mortified website and an appearance on Last Call with Carson Daly. In seven years, Nadelberg estimates that Mortified shows have played to sold out crowds regularly in every city.

Mortified is not for professional comedians, Nadelberg stresses. The performers are primarily regular people telling honest, albeit sometimes embarrassing, stories from their personal pasts. The tales run the gamut of unfulfilled crushes, teenage Dungeon's & Dragons players, being cut from high school athletic teams, and trying to watch pornography through the squiggly, snowy lines of an old television set.

"It's really important to make sure Mortified is a curated project," Nadelberg says. "We don't want it to become an audition project. We're not judging on performance ability."

The show has found a loyal following in Boston. Produced monthly by local area natives Karen Corday and Sara Faith Alterman, Mortified Boston has a regular Thursday night spot at Mottley's Comedy Club in Faneuil Hall once a month. The two women host a pre-show pep talk and take turns kicking off the show by reading their own stories so everyone else on the lineup can get a feel for what to expect when it's their turn.

Corday, a self-confessed "lifelong diary keeper," heard about Mortified from a friend and thought it was a great concept, so she shrugged off her fears and sent come samples in through the website. Her first effort went over very well, as Corday picked out what she felt were her most humiliating stories, including one about a pretend boyfriend she named Michael from when she was 12 years old. After reading several times, Corday was asked by then-producer Giulia Rossi to help her cast the shows, and ultimately joined Alterman in taking over the reins when Rossi moved to New York.

"I was really nervous about it," Corday said of her initial decision to give Mortified a try. "I did some plays in high school but I'm not really a performer and I get nervous doing public speaking. But I thought the idea for the show was so great, and I knew my stuff was funny and I wanted to be a part of it despite my fears."

Elizabeth Gutterman is a first grade teacher from Providence, Rhode Island, and was one of nine performers at the April 2^nd show at Mottley's. On stage she talked about a guy named Brett she met while in New York City who she called "a total misfit like me" and she fell for after speaking for about 20 minutes. She read a poem she wrote for him called "On the Turning Away" that she gave to him before they parted ways.

She also recounted "Brett" through old diary entries of her memories of their encounter and the impact it had on her as a teenager, despite the fact they had met just one time.

"I was living in New York City for a while and some friends of mine had done the show," Gutterman said. "One of them asked me, 'Hey Gutterman, you got stuff right?' Yeah I got stuff but it's not funny. She said, 'I'm gonna need to read it' and she put me on her show and it was great."

"I like Mortified better than stand-up because it's so real. It feels like, as mortified I was then, it just feels great now. The point of Mortified is to let the material speak for itself. I am very glad I did it and would love to try it again sometime."

Mortified has big plans for the future and Nadelberg hopes to expand its web presence, but in the present, they rely on word of mouth to get their message out. He says that while every city has its own personalities, the stories shared at Mortified shows everywhere are fairly similar in nature.

In a time where people all over are experiencing the fallout of a difficult economic time, Nadelberg feels like Mortified is a place where people can come to laugh and forget about their problems. It's as though listening to others tell stories that fans of the show can relate to helps bring back a flood of fun memories in a comfortable setting.

"When people come to a Mortified show, they are basically saying, 'Please make me laugh," Nadelberg said. "It's not a spiteful show at all, and people are always very encouraging, which is really important to us."