In 1986, a hybrid performance concept was born on a “torn piece of paper” posted on the callboard at the University of Iowa. It read: “No Shame Theatre is looking for a few good pieces that would be suitable for performing in the back of a pickup truck in a parking lot someplace.”
Writers stepped forth with such pieces, and founders Todd Ristau and Stan Ruth staged them in the rain, on the back of a 1976 green Dodge pickup, a sound man controlling the truck’s stereo, all illuminated by the headlight of a motorcycle.
That concept – an open mic for original creative works no longer than five minutes – spread to New York, Miami, Chicago, England in 1996, about 30 cities in all now. Salinas will be the newest “chapter” when No Shame Monterey County opens this Sunday.
No Shame Theatre invites audiences to submit and perform any original performance. They can be monologues, songs, poems, comedy. They can be on scripts or memorized. They can include profanity and nudity. Led by the motto “Dare to Fail,” they have three rules: 1) Works must be original. 2) They can’t run longer than five minutes. 3) They must be legal.
Monterey County chapter’s founder and emcee, actor and playwright David Norum, would know what constitutes legal because he used to be a cop with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney’s office. He jokes that he got his start by receiving so much praise from public defenders on the “fiction writing” in his police reports.
“Nudity with sexual content or a sex act is indecent exposure,” he says. “Nudity by itself is not against the law, unless the city of Salinas has a rule.”
He participated, beginning to end, in the San Luis Obispo branch of No Shame Theatre for its entire five-year run.
“There were a lot of monologues, stand-up comics, singer-songwriters,” Norum says. “A lot of short plays, screenplay excerpts, puppet shows. Bizarro performance art, almost unexplainable.”
I ask him to try.
“One time an actor came on stage only in aluminum foil underwear and danced around. It was five minutes of funny.”
He says that for the last two years of SLO’s No Shame run, another performer put on a serial, a continuous story told in paper mache puppets and light shows. Not everything’s been successful in the traditional sense, but the vibe is forgiving.
“There are some massive failures,” he says. “Terrible singers. Sometimes things can be obscene. [But] I’ve never seen anyone get less than a welcoming reception.”
He’s hoping to get 15 performances on this Sunday’s maiden voyage, accepted without censor, first-come-first-served.
“It can literally be anything,” he says. Just mind those three rules.
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