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The Washington Times, Show Section
November 2, 2007
Photo courtesy of The Washington Times
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Kylee Coffman smiles at the four seated strangers as she enters a well-lit room at the Arlington Independent Media center in Clarendon. Brown haired and big-eyed, the 25-year-old is stylishly dressed in a long, mustard-hued cowl-neck top, jeans and black high-heeled boots.
She introduces herself, then cracks open a black-and-white composition book, the cover of which she's personalized with a skull and crossbones decoupage.
Inside, its pages teem with doodles, collages, words and even a game or two of M.A.S.H. (Think hard enough, and you'll remember this fortune-telling game.)
"I have a punk rock boyfriend," Miss Coffman reads excitedly.
The strangers laugh.
Miss Coffman snickers.
The scenario is unusual, to say the least. Why do the confessions of a poised 25-year-old professional sound like the ones your "B.F.F." from back in the day made in her secret in-class notes to you? Why is this chick reading this embarrassing stuff to strangers? Furthermore, why is everyone laughing about it?
"Mortified" — that's the answer. This is a preliminary screening session for "Mortified," a five-year-old stage show that mines the childhood and teenage writings of everyday Americans to produce one of the funniest, most endearing productions out there today. It's what might happen if YM magazine's beloved "Say Anything" column met "The Wonder Years" in a comedy club for a big, stiff drink.
We have 32-year-old David Nadelberg to blame for this. In the late '90s, he unearthed a cringe-inducing letter he'd written in the 10th grade to a girl he fancied. In the letter, he's desperately selling himself to his crush by dissing "ALF," praising "beautiful eyes" and providing a clip-and-save coupon with his phone number on it.
The adult Mr. Nadelberg read the memento to his buddies, who howled over it.
"I was faced with my past in such a unique way," he says. "The idiot adult Dave and the idiot child Dave were pressed right against one another, and it really made it neat for me to see how much I had changed and, sadly, how much I haven't changed."
After the self-discovery, he had a thought: What if other people have saved the junk they wrote back then and it's also this funny?
He went hunting, scared up some great material, and decided to put the authors up onstage for a big roast — er, celebration of angst-filled days gone by.
To give audiences the juiciest stories possible, Mr. Nadelberg devised a method of threading together different entries from a lone author so that they formed something more universal than "Today my best friend pantsed me." The finished pieces had themes more like "I was too curvy too soon, which made it really hard to fit in," or "I got tired of being the only black student in school, especially during Black History Month."
Mr. Nadelberg staged his first show in 2002 in Los Angeles (where he lives), and since then, "Mortified" has grown into a full-fledged, nationwide brand.
It has chapters in eight U.S. cities and one in Sweden (each of which seek out local readers); its second book comes out this January; and it has been featured on "This American Life" and in countless articles.
"I thought it'd be a fun experiment, and it really struck a nerve," says Mr. Nadelberg, who quit his job about a year and half ago to Mortify full time.
"Comedy and catharsis." That's what Neil Katcher, a show veteran who oversees "Mortified's" live events, says are the secrets to the project's success. So maybe the issues that our younger selves faced (eating disorders, racism, divorce, etc.) weren't funny in and of themselves — but the way we viewed and wrote about them probably was. By hearing how many other people went through mortifying moments like ours, maybe we can all begin to laugh at and let go of those awkward years.
Miss Coffman is one of seven Washingtonians reading pieces at the D.C. "Mortified" chapter's debut events on Tuesday and Wednesday at HR-57. (Shows are at 8 and 7:30 p.m., respectively. For more information, visit www.getmortified.com.) She was about to toss her journals before she heard about the screening session in August. Now she's glad she kept them around so that she could experience the healing powers of humor.
The people that run "Mortified" acknowledge that the show's popularity probably has at least a little to do with the current entertainment climate — reality TV, blogs, YouTube and social networking sites.
D.C. show co-producer Sarah Grace McCandless says that audiences are dying to peer into people's lives. Plus, she adds, "There's probably a willingness to open yourself up more these days because it's so easy to put yourself out there."
Unlike the computer or TV, though, seeing real-live bodies reading their real-live journal entries provides a sense of connection and a level of authenticity that's increasingly hard to come by in this slick, multimedia-fied world.
"I think people really hunger for that," says Mr. Katcher. "You're not getting this scrubbed, processed thing [with 'Mortified']... You're getting nostalgia, but warts and all."
-- Jenny Mayo
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