No telling what you'll get each night, but it's sure to be shameless

If you have anything in common with Simon Cowell of American Idol, then No Shame Theatre is definitely not for you. Designed to be a bridge between writers, directors, and actors, No Shame can be a little rough. And it was the night I saw them.

Friday night, a loose conglomeration of actors from several No Shame chapters throughout the country ? L.A., Roanoke, Iowa, to name a few ? presented 14 pieces, all less than five minutes long, with two of them being original pieces written by local authors.

The best piece was written and performed by Todd Ristau, one of the founders of No Shame, which began in the mid-?80s in the back of his pickup truck, in Iowa. In it, a particularly disgusted guardian angel, lit smartly with a hand-held flashlight a l? spooky campfire stories, tells his former protected exactly why he's leaving him.

Slick, profane, and well paced, it's obviously been performed multiple times before. Ristau, who has had a piece he penned performed in London's West End, probably could use it as an audition piece.

Many of the rest of the pieces on display this night were similar in scale and interest to audition pieces. And when they fell flat, the palpable uncomfortableness that accompanies flubbed auditions filled the air. But since there is no shame, as evidenced by Ristau's ridiculous red pants ensemble, and since nothing runs more than five minutes long, all is forgivable.

(If you're not a bit of a night owl, the 10:30 p.m. start time could make the lesser pieces more grating, especially by the end of the show.)

One of the freakier moments of the night came when an eye-linered Goth kid from Roanoke came out and did what was either a magic trick or a self-mutilation exhibition, running a long needle through his arm and pulling a thread through the holes. It turned out to be a magic trick, but the whole look-at-me-Daddy-I'm-Sylvia-Plath thing worked.

A local girl, a recent College of Charleston graduate, gave a decent a capella singing performance, speeding through a torch song with only one flubbed line. She sang unaccompanied because no one in the audience played piano, a fact that was brought out by one of the troupe's directors, who was scouring those seated for willing actors and a pianist. (She had been overheard earlier saying she was moving to L.A. and could make money several ways. Temping and filing, maybe.)

Those acting onstage ran the gamut from skilled, trained actors to kids who didn't quite know the difference between drama and acting. But that's the point of No Shame, to get artists over the shame and fear of producing and get down to doing their craft.