Eccentric performers take stage at No Shame Theatre

CHARLESTON — It’s almost 10 p.m. and Simon Adkins is sprinkled white like a powdered donut. He casts a tiny smile as he very deliberately takes off his glasses and blows a cloud of particulates from the lenses into the dark.

“How not to make French bread,” Adkins says evenly. The 10 in the Piccolo Spoleto audience laugh.

“Do not drink the bottle of chardonnay, especially after a bong hit. ... Do not, do not, pick up the bag of flour and spin around because you like feeling dizzy.”

Adkins goes on for five minutes before leaving the College of Charleston stage.

By the time the evening is over, one man will bark like a dog, another will rhapsodize about his skintight pants and another will ... well, evacuate a purple balloon animal.

It’s all tender, raw, personal and strangely beautiful — or just plain strange. In a way, it’s the antidote to all that makes the glamorous Spoleto Festival USA and its homegrown cousin, Piccolo, shine for 17 days — all the perfect, all the sexy, all the familiar.

This is No Shame Theatre, where 15 people show up with scripts in hand and tell a story in whatever way makes sense to them.

On this evening, most are young. One works at a pizza joint. Another is a security guard who has done magic since he was 7. Adkins works “just another soul-killing, air-conditioned, cubicle job.”

(Most are from Roanoke, Va., where No Shame founder Todd Ristau lives and teaches.)

They all are looking for something. Self-expression, sure. But something less tangible, too: something about community, about acceptance, about erasing the scars from all the times they weren’t cast in the lead or were picked last for kickball.

“I never stood on a stage or acted, ever,” says Chad Snyder, a 34-year-old truck driver originally from West Virginia. “But the first time someone applauds, you’re like, this works.”

He grins. “It’s addictive.”

There are only three rules at No Shame, says Ristau, who christened what has become a franchise in the back of a pickup at the University of Iowa. It was 1986, and he was a student in playwriting there.

“First, it has to be original materials, which means no copyright violations. The second rule is that everything needs to be five minutes or less. If it’s really, really great, you leave them hungry for more. If it crashes and burns, you don’t have to watch the wreckage for long.

“And three, it can’t break anything, including the law.”

Last year, No Shame’s first at Piccolo, “audiences seemed to expect a ... show,” says Ristau, 42. This year, he decided to go with the best pieces from the past 20 years of No Shame Theatre, which is supported in about 12 cities — including Roanoke; New York; Miami; Austin, Texas; and, intermittently, Charleston.

Famous No Shame alumni include John Leguizamo, Camryn Manheim, playwrights Rebecca Gilman and Naomi Wallace.

Jeff Goode spun evenings at No Shame into “The Eight: Reindeer Monologues,” which is so well known that Ristau would have to pay to present it. And Ristau has done well, too, seeing one of his plays produced on London’s West End.

“I need a female volunteer,” says Trent Westerbrook, a slight man in a black porkpie hat. No takers. He drafts someone. Then he hands out nine disposable cameras. As soon as he starts talking, he says, photographers should start snapping.

The lights go out.

“The storm is fading,” he begins. Flashes explode in the dark, and you can hear the achy crank of the film being advanced.

“The rain has stopped, but the lightning is still striking, flashbulb fireflies, and the incessant chirping of crickets.”

In a simple but deft gesture, Westerbrook, 25, not only transports the audience to one painful, exhilarating moment in his life, but also makes them complicit — an actor, a god, nature.

After the show, Adam Hahn, the man who talked about his incredibly tight pants, sits at a long restaurant table with the rest of the cast. Hahn has a degree in engineering but no passion for it and, thanks to No Shame, has turned to playwriting. He drove 1,100 miles, from Iowa City, Iowa, for this evening.

“I’d love to be able to work on my own writing, work in the theater without having a day job,” says Hahn, 24.

You don’t want Broadway? The West End? If you’re making wishes, why not make that one first?

“Because if I make just enough money and have just enough recognition and don’t have a day job, that’s enough.”

Reach Mobley-Martinez at (803) 771-8498 or tmobley-martinez@thestate.com.