In 2014, I stood up and read my high school journal to two sold out audiences.
A few months ago, I had gone to another
Mortified Show, and it was awesome (as always). I told Frank (who helps produce the show) I had some journals, and a few weeks later we met and went over them. A week after that they told me I would be in the May show. I typed up my journal entries, and edited them with my friend Lauren a bit, and felt like I really hadn't done enough to prepare. I don't know what I thought I needed to do, since I changed not even one word from my original journals!... I read them a few times for friends, one time at the practice rehearsal, got some more feedback from Frank (mostly about my intro), and that was it. In retrospect, that was all the work I needed to do. I was just nervous wanting to over practice and prepare, which would have been a bad idea.
^ we all have to have a picture of ourselves in High School- here is mine!
To say I was FREAKING OUT before the show would be an understatement! Luckily I had lots of great people to calm me down and tell me how amazing I would be and even fanned me! (it helped! haha) Frank was also amazing at giving me pep talks before each show. I needed them! I thought I would be less nervous the second night, but I was still REALLY nervous!
I actually didn't tell that many people that I was going to be doing this, so to everyone who wasn't able to make it- sorry! The tickets also sold out three weeks before the show! So they were in short supply. To everyone that came, thank you! ♡
I was so lucky to have an awesome group of people sharing the mortification with me! Everyone was amazing! Here we all are-
Even though I was scared, and thought I would throw up...and sweated a lot more then I thought I would (who knew I would get so sweaty when I was nervous?).... it was one of the coolest experiences. I would do it again in a second- and would recommend that anyone do it themselves.
(Special thanks to Frank & Lauren for being amazing editors and encouraging me every mortifying journal entry of the way!)
NOTE: a lot of people asked me how my parents felt about this. They are pretty used to me doing somewhat crazy things at this point-- traveling to Morocco by myself, taking off hiking alone, volunteering in 3rd world countries, dropping out of college and moving to Boston...etc-- so they didn't even bat an eye when I told them about it (my Mom has been to past shows and they have watched the movie). That said, they will not (and never will) see my performance. It is NOT about them at all- in fact I think I reference them one time. But there are some things you just don't need to share with you parents, and your high school journals are probably at the top of that list.
