House Lights: Nick Mortensen

Madison doesn't offer much help for young, local stand-up comedians. There's only one comedy club in town, a lot of comics don't really care for comedy clubs anyway, and various efforts to pull stand-ups together in other venues (like the WiSUC Project and a short-lived open-mic at, of all places, the Klinic) have struggled to keep up a presence. Green Bay native Nick Mortensen has been feeling his way through this environment for the four years he's been a comedian, even driving down to Madison to play shows before he moved here a year ago. In September, Mortensen started an alternative-comedy venture of his own: ComedySlut, a planned Thursday happy-hour series at The Frequency. After an awkward first run, Mortensen had a falling-out with the four other comics involved and decided to rename the series Thursdaddy, going solo and testing out an hour of new material each week.

It's been informal and hit-and-miss, but he's a good host to his small audience. He routinely sets up s'more-making stations at The Frequency's tables before the shows and manages to come off friendly and mild-mannered even when he's rambling on about, say, making "ball powder" out of Waffle Crisp cereal. In any case, Mortensen says he's planning to tighten things when he takes his chances headlining Saturday at the Majestic Theatre, where he'll also be taping a DVD. As he pounded the pavement this week to spread word about the show—even handing people big, silver tickets for free—the 31-year-old comic spoke with Decider about tough gigs, mental health, and embarrassing personal revelations.

On his plans for the show (then ADHD, then shame, then his parents)
Nick Mortensen: It's my 75 best minutes of material that I've written in the last four years. It's probably the last time I'll perform it, unless I have to do another DVD. I wrote that stuff when I was underwater. I suffered from ADHD my whole life and I kinda knew, but I thought it was bullshit. I got medicated for it. A year later, I picked up my first book on it, Journeys Through ADDulthood by Sari Solden, and she described me... I had a deep shame about the fact that I wanted attention by being a comedian. My first business card is a shadow of me shrugging and looking down, because I felt that awkward having a picture taken of me, because I was so ashamed of wanting attention for being a comedian. I just felt like it was not something a fully formed human being would want, because it opens you up to ridicule. My parents are great people; they just adopted a baby. That was the beginning of a turn for me. It was the most generous thing I'd ever seen anybody do. And I was like, "Well, they're my parents. I can't be a bad person."

On playing the now-closed Klinic's comedy open mic last year
NM: It was awful. It was consistently awful. I didn't run it. I just showed up, and I would watch 11 awful comedians go over their time and I would just sit with my notebook and I would write whatever I could write in that two or three hours before it was time for me to go on. I always closed the show, which was a very nice gesture, [letting me be the] sort of headliner, but also, in a situation like that, it's the worst possible spot, because the crowd—if they're even still there—they're aggravated, they'd watch so much comedy, and there would be a lot of drunks staggering in at the bar.

On not working with other comedians
NM: It's been better [this way]. I found myself enjoying walking up to groups of people and just sort of interjecting myself into their conversations. It was more fun. I was connecting to a group of people. I would get laughs out of people and I would hand them my business card, and that would be it. Just like, "Hey man," whatever they were talking about, 'cause I've got a wide range of weird things. One group was talking about Colin Hay. She was like, "I think I might take Colin Hay off my iPod." And I was like, "No, you shouldn't, man. That guy reinvented himself, alright?" Those people, I realized they were my audience.

On revealing details about his personal life in comedy bits
NM: I am self-conscious about it, but it's harder not to. A lot of women are like, "Ah, I just want honesty in a man," but nobody really wants honesty. They want honesty, but they want it candy-coated too. You can be as honest with somebody as you want, but when you do something that echoes their negative self-talk, then you strike a nerve and they're mad at you. I was doing so much of that by accident and alienating people, but I was trying so hard not to. You know what's not as hard as this? Being embarrassed in front of people. There's nothing worse than trying to do something that you're not good at and failing. I'd rather just fail at being me than just fail at being somebody else.