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Wednesday, 28 February 2007 16:17 |
By KRISTIN ERHARD
At No Shame Theatre, five-minute acts run the gamut of quality and themes.
In the skit, ìTom Waits for Childrenî a man with a rumpled hat and baritone voice, sings the Muffin Man while playing the keyboard as the audience keels over in laughter. Later, a group of young actors has a conversation composed entirely of palindromes. Mixed in with all this is a skit with more serious overtones, about rejection and unattractiveness.
With the motto ìDare to fail,î No Shame Theatre is sure to entertain any audience.
No Shame Theatre is a forum for theatrical experimentation that takes place at N.C. Stage Company, 33 Haywood St. in downtown Asheville, at 11 p.m. on the third Saturday of every month. Admission is a mere $5 for improvisational comedy and drama ó a guaranteed mixed bag of nuts.
No
Shame Theatre has more than 30 chapters in other hip and obscure cities
and towns around the U.S and even in the U.K. With such an eclectic and
eccentric art scene, it is only fitting that Asheville finally hopped
the bandwagon.
No Shame Theatre
not only allows, but encourages, a ìno holds barred, just get up and
performî attitude. Anyone interested in performing an act ó musical,
comedy, dance or drama ó is welcome to do so in front of a live
audience.
Acceptance is
key, with the only prerequisite for obtaining a five-minute time slot
is showing up at N.C. Stage Company with a typed script an hour ahead
of show time.
Prospective
performers need not fear rejection. In fact, rejection could even be
embraced as performers learn what to keep and omit from their
repertoire.
Although
anything goes at No Shame Theatre, there is a definite trend towards
the taboo and comedic. In a skit titled ìPost Coitus Interruptus,î a
girl straddles her boyfriend, discussing their future while
intermittently humping and rolling around. In another skit, two men sit
across from each other making small talk until they are suddenly
kissing.
The more serious
performances are not as popular, perhaps because five minutes does not
give the viewer enough time to sympathize with the characters,
especially when the skit follows an absurd act of a man getting on
stage sobbing about a dead daffodil and professing his loneliness to a
bewildered audience.
Keeping the absurd and original on the forefront, the hosts of No Shame Theatre came up with just three rules as follows:
ï All pieces but be original work
ï All pieces must be under 5 minutes
ï You cannot break or harm anything (yourself, the audience or the law)
The first rule
encourages creativity and prohibits copyright violations. The second
rule is quality control ó if the act works, great. If it is a flop, the
audience does not have to witness the wreckage for too long. Freedom of
expression lasts for five minutes.
The third rule
probably has its own story behind it, but exists to protect the
audience and the performers from potentially destructive creativity.
No Shame Theatre
challenges traditional notions of theatre, fosters individual
creativity, promotes collaboration and, most importantly, creates an
inclusive rather than competitive environment for ìdiamonds in the
roughî to polish up their acts and get over their inhibitions.
With skits being
limited to five minutes and admission only $5 óNo Shame is synonymous
to ìnothing to lose.î The next No Shame Theatre will take place at 11
p.m. March 24 at N.C. Stage Company.
ï
Kristin Erhard, who works for the Daily Planet, is a senior at UNC Asheville.
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