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And Now for a Moment of Public Humiliation

Have you ever read an old diary from your adolescence and had vivid flashbacks to those angst-filled years? Now think about reading that diary on stage, in front of an audience. It's supposed to be cathartic. We think it sounds mortifying. . Photograph by Fredrik Broden.

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It is one of the biggest unspoken rules in life: You never, under any circumstances, read someone else's diary without permission. And even with the go-ahead, which you are unlikely to ever receive, there is a good chance you won't be overjoyed at what you read. Diaries are the novels of the soul. They are where one keeps deep, dark secrets; blatantly honest thoughts; and desperately lame observations, predictions, and viewpoints. They are the place where one keeps things to themselves, things they don't tell their friends, their significant others, or even their pets. After all, some things are better left unsaid out loud. But what if someone were to volunteer the information to anyone willing to listen? And what if what he said was told from the awkward perspective of the vocabulary-challenged and laughably pathetic child we all once were?

This is the premise of Mortified, a live-comedy reality­-theater event that originated in Los Angeles and has since expanded to San Francisco, New York, Boston, and now Chicago. Its creator and producer, David Nadelberg, believes that putting one's childhood lameness out there for the world to hear is cathartic and entertaining. He even takes it one step further: Nadelberg thinks it's slapstick comedy as well. So what once were your most embarrassing, shameful, and degrading moments from adolescence - things you only wrote in diaries or in poems or in love letters never sent - can now be transformed into a seven-minute stand-up comedy routine that is performed in front of a room full of strangers who paid hard-earned cash to wallow in and laugh along with the most mortifying moments of your young adult life. Hilarious, right?