Naked launch

RUB-A-DUB-DUB Rozzi, left, and Leitman get confessional in the tub.

Photo: Anya Garrett

Margot Leitman confesses her childhood sexual obsession with Bobby Brown; Giulia Rozzi admits she humped beanbag chairs as a kid; and you the audience…make your own prurient disclosures. Leitman and Rozzi cofounded and cohost Stripped Stories, an evening of humorous sex-themed storytelling in which local comics, musicians and audience members reveal their sexual secrets, usually to comic effect. The show hits Zanies on Monday 27.

Single New Yorkers in their early thirties, Leitman and Rozzi met a decade ago while studying theater their senior year at Ithaca College. After graduating in 2000, they randomly joined a group of folks in a cross-country trip to California that overnighted in Sin City. There, at a posh hotel, the two friends took a bath together. “It was the most nonsexual bath ever,” Rozzi says. “We were so close at that point we were like, we can take a bath together. We were naked, just revealing ourselves.” At the time, they didn’t realize they were engaging in the kind of confessional sharing that would form the basis of Stripped Stories.

Leitman spent that summer in L.A. before returning to New York, where she pursued comedic acting and a style of stand-up storytelling that she now teaches at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea. She also appeared regularly as the character Gynoblast on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and shows up on VH1’s Best Week Ever. Rozzi stayed put in L.A. for a few years, training at iO West and the Groundlings Theatre, then moved in ’04 to New York, where she coproduced the live show Mortified, in which adults read aloud from their teen diaries and journals; she’s also appeared on CNN, MTV and VH1.

“In 2007, we went back to square one and said, ‘Why do we like working together?’” Rozzi says. “It was because of our friendship.” Having experienced their fair share of relationship ups and downs, Rozzi and Leitman decided to parlay the swapping of intimate stories into a full-length show. “What we’ve tried to do with Stripped Stories is bring that to the stage, where it’s just a bunch of friends gossiping,” Leitman says. “The first show sold out; it’s been amazing.”

In each outing, Leitman and Rozzi trade tales from their own pasts while guest performers, often professional comics, do the same. After they play the party game Never Have I Ever with the audience, the winner is invited onstage to share a story. The show ends with a musical guest performing an original sex-themed song or two. While sex is always at the center of Stripped Stories, confessions often lean toward the mundane. “It can be anything from a story about a first kiss to a story about an orgy,” Rozzi says.

Both say that, once an audience gets talking, Pandora’s box opens. “I think that everyone, whether they admit it or not, wants some attention for something wild they did,” Rozzi says. At Stripped Stories, audience confessions are valued. “We create an environment where people want to reveal themselves to us,” Leitman says. “We don’t judge anybody for their actions; we only celebrate them. We’re very serious when we say that.”

For the Zanies set (Stripped Stories’ first road show), touring comic Al Jackson, local stand-up Allison Leber and Chicago-based musical duo Mike and Duane have been booked. And while the show screams fun night out for a crew of martini-swilling, Sex and the City–addicted bachelorettes in Old Town, Rozzi and Leitman say their show has a devoted following of African-Americans, both straight and gay men and, perhaps surprisingly, people over 45. “We get the baby-boomer crowd because their relationship with sex is a lot healthier than our generation,” Leitman says. “They love to talk about it. They usually win the game.”

Whether they’re young, old, male or female, Stripped Stories often leaves audiences feeling a little frisky. “After the show, people will tell us, ‘I took my first date to your show, and we went home and did it afterwards,’” Rozzi says. “One of my goals is that it opens up a dialogue between partners and friends.”

Stripped Stories exposes itself Monday 27, 8:30pm at Zanies.

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