It’s “No Shame” Theater night at Studio Roanoke, and Dwayne Yancey has just wrapped up a poem about, among other things, space traveling Jesus. Now Blair Peyton, self billed as the second funniest man in Roanoke, is on stage haphazardly plucking a guitar strung with what seem to be rubber bands. He’s performing his new song, “Baby Talk,” a sort of rhythm-less R&B cacophony complete with baby voiced “goo goo ga gas” and a rap interlude from his friend Bryan Hancock. Despite all the intentional anti-melody, I’m actually finding the song oddly catchy. As “Baby Talk” nears its swelling finally, Bryan’s duct-taped guitar breaks off at the neck.
Much of No Shame Theater shares that guitar’s make-shift, duct-tape-rigged feel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. No Shame is like open mike meets variety show meets community center. Every Friday night at eleven, Studio Roanoke lends its stage to anyone who has, or at least thinks they have, some kind of performance that needs an audience. Any performer who arrives early enough to get one of fifteen spots gets five minutes of stage time. What performers do with that time is completely up to them within three rules: all pieces must be under five minutes, all pieces must be original, and performers can’t break anything (laws, the venue… bones).
The duct-tape feel comes not only from the limited props, production value, and, occasionally, actor preparation time, but from the way wildly diverse pieces are joined together under one banner. It’s hard to say what one might see in a given night of No Shame. Sometimes there are poems, sketches, monologues and music. Sometimes there are puppeteers, mimes, evangelicals practicing their sermons and five minute paintings. Maybe a professional florist will come in and do a live flower arrangement, and then five minutes later a man will be reading a poem about a disastrous, X-rated encounter with a bear.
This Friday at 8 p.m. is the bi-annual “Best of” No Shame. The event will showcase over twenty of the best received pieces from the previous six months. Despite the “Best” moniker, No Shame founder Todd Ristau insists Best of No Shame is not the No Shame Oscars. Ristau sees the night as a sampler platter… less of a pat on the back for the performers and more of a chance for the uninitiated to get a taste of what No Shame is all about.
Ristau, now a professor at Hollins University, founded No Shame in the back of his pick-up truck in 1986 while studying at the University of Iowa. It was founded on the same three rules it still runs on today, and since its founding Ristau has seen the idea grow into a transnational event. There are No Shames in cities all over the U.S. There’s even a high school version in Iowa, “Yes Shame,” so named because they had to institute extra rules to get permission to put it on. No Shame has been running in Roanoke since 2003. Ristau thinks the format has been successful both because it gives participants an open creative outlet, and because of the sense of camaraderie and inclusiveness a good No Shame encourages.
Ristau sees No Shame as “an experimental learning lab where an emerging playwright can get really practical experience with short pieces and direct audience feedback.”
Yet the performances themselves aren’t what Ristau enjoys most.
“I think my favorite thing is how many people have told me that they’ve found a home,” said Ristau. “That sounds really schmaltzy, but I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they walk into No Shame and there’s an instant community.”
Ristau thinks that sense of community comes from openness and encouragement. All No Shame performances are not created equal, but the audience is always supportive.
“We’re a theater that thrives on generosity and doesn’t really have a lot of patience for meanness,” said Ristau. “Everyone gets applause.”
Still, part of what keeps performers coming back is seeing what makes the audience respond most strongly.
“There’s the polite and supportive applause, and then if something is really good there’s thunderous applause and stomping feet,” said Ristau.
The freedom to fail combined with desire to succeed seems to be what keeps the performers coming back. Amy Alls, a singer/songwriter, said when she started out at No Shame she didn’t have a lot of confidence, but the enthusiasm of the crowd brought her out of her shell.
“Even if you [stink], you still get more confidence,” said Alls. “It is addictive, especially when you do get a good response.”
Not all pieces went over quite as well as others at this past Friday’s No Shame, but even when something does bomb it’s generally a unique bungle. This Friday’s Best of No Shame will lack some of the “will it work or won’t it” spontaneity. That may make it an easier entry point for new No Shame spectators. Of course, No Shame isn’t a spectator sport. So if you do happen to see the show this Friday and come to the conclusion you have more talent in a single hair follicle than any of the performers, No Shame regular Steve “Dogg” Glassbrenner has some advice:
“Come back next week and put on something better.”
By Case Blackwell [email protected]