I'm making my debut as a reader at the LA edition of the famed Mortified Live reading series this week. If you're not familiar with it, Mortified is a storytelling show where adults read their most mortifying childhood works of art (diary entries, song lyrics, poems, letters, etc.) in front of total strangers - all for the sake of comedy.
I was sure, given the fact that I'd been journaling pretty much consistently since third grade (the first diary of which was destroyed for fear of being discovered), that I'd have a lot of material.
But in my own process of digging through my past, my adult self took my younger self very seriously. I didn't see the comedy in a lot of it (most of it made my present day self quite sad), and I wasn't really embarassed by any of it.
That's where the producers come in.
I guess I had this sense that when I read at Mortified, I would be embodying my younger self, through my own words, delivered in the spirit in which they were written. But during rehearsal, when I read my piece (which was assembled together for me in a process probably not unfamiliar to authors who hand their manuscripts over to an editor at their publishing company), in earnest, the way I felt back in 1989, the way I actually sounded back in 1991, I was stopped.
"Can you sound a bit more teenagery?"
Hm.
Sure, I can. After all, I'm an actor. But that's not how I actually said it. And that's not what I sounded like, ever.
And then I realized: the truth doesn't matter. For the sake of comedy, it doesn't matter how it really happened. It doesn't matter that when I wrote something back then, I meant one thing, but now, chopped up, moved around and read out of context, it sounds random. Apparently, a piece littered with non-sequiturs is...funny.
So now I've got to change my perspective. I'm not a writer reading my own piece up there. I'm an actor performing a script, derived from something someone wrote a long time ago.
I won't be letting out my inner 14 year old (who's never really gone away), as I thought I would. I will be portraying her, and there's a big difference. The characterized (or charicaturized) version of me is not me, no more than any other character I ever play is me. Parts of me will be recognizable in my portrayal of her, but she's not me. The real 14 year old me - that sad little girl, always locked in the house by her parents - must stay where she is, somewhere deep inside of me.
I don't know if the performance will actually be funny. I'm too close to it to know. I guess we shall see.
If you're in LA, you can come see Mortified Live on Wednesday, September 19 at 8 p.m. at King King in Hollywood, 6555 Hollywood Blvd. For more information, visit Mortified's website and for tickets, click here.
