Public Humiliation: See It, Do It

Curious about how these tales will fare in front of an audience? Go see the inaugural shows for the D.C. chapter of Mortified, which will play at HR-57 (1610 14th St. NW, 202-667-3700) on Nov. 6 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance at http://www.getmortified.com/live or $15 at the door. Some of the proceeds will go to 826 National, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping students improve their writing skills.

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The next D.C. show is planned for late January or early February -- timed to the publication of Mortified's second anthology of angsty material, "Mortified: Love Is a Battlefield" -- with an initial screening session held sometime in December. For information on being a part of the show, visit http://www.getmortified.com/live/casting.

But first: If you've got baggage from your adolescence to sort through, Mortified producers and first-timers offer five bits of advice for sifting gold from the tiresome sediment of life's shoe box.

PICK OUT TOPICS OR STORIES THAT ARE UNIVERSAL."The big thing about being a kid is you think you're the only person going through what you're going through," Mortified performer Caryn Sykes says. "The illuminating material is the stuff that you realize going back, 'Well, I wasn't the only person going through that.' "

GO BEYOND JOURNAL ENTRIES. "Bring five minutes of material and bring extra things," organizer Sarah Grace McCandless says. "Everything is fair game. We encourage people to be creative: not just diaries, but anything in other formats like letters, song lyrics, notes passed in class."

LET OTHERS BE THE JUDGE. Moments and material you think are boring might be uproarious to the objective viewer. "It's really hard to read your own material; you're so close to it," says Mortified creator David Nadelberg, who lives in Los Angeles. "I always encourage anybody, regardless of whether they're thinking about doing our silly project, to dig up one thing you created as a kid -- be it a letter, lyrics, a short story, an essay you wrote about Martin Luther King in civics class -- and share it with just one person. You'll get a lot of value out of that."

LOOK FOR REPETITION. Watch for tones or topics that occur frequently; they may point to larger themes in your journal. "As I would read, things would start to pop out at me that seemed particularly ironic," performer Robin Katcher says. "Whatever my intention was, I created the opposite. There's something within the repetition that indicates what you're thinking."

CONFRONT UGLY MATERIAL. "Maybe things were horrifying or terrible at the moment, but now they are just meaningless," performer Kylee Coffman says. "My advice would be just to pull from that and not be ashamed. It's very hard to step outside yourself because there's always that 15-year-old hiding inside of you, but some of the funniest stuff is the stuff you dread the most."

-- Dan Zak