from The Miami Herald - February 1994
No Shame Theater is an open forum for performers of all types, where anything really does go: monologues (Shakespearean or original), poetry, stand-up comedy, performance art, film, dance, theater skits, and intriguingly nebulous items that fall between the cracks.
It's Saturday Night Live meets Mystery Science Theater 2000; sarcastic, smarmy, absurd, inadvertently or deliverately bad.
The brainchild of writer Brian Rochlin, No Shame Theater takes place Friday nights at 11 at Area Stage theater on Lincoln Road in South Beach. The rules are few: sign up by 10:30 p.m., keep your gig to seven minutes and don't damage the theater.
In almost a year of performances (the event celebrates its first anniversary on Feb. 26), No Shame-goers have been treated to the good, the bad, and the really silly. For instance: an absurdist serial featuring an armless hitchhiker makking her way to Miami with a not-quite-there transsexual (he/she is waiting for an introduction to Lorena Bobbitt). Steve Rosenthal's video Reflections on a Ninja Dog, a romantic ninja action musical. The guy from California who did imitations... of kitchen appliances and utensils (his Mr. Coffee was memorable). Marty Hill's cynical billion-year-old angel whose account of creation fell somewhere between Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac. The woman who brought out a ferret with paper bunny ears to tell the Uncle Remus tale of Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch.
The Briar Patch saga is a favorite of Rochlin's who says its combination of absurdity and stupidity made it one of the things "that were so bad they were good."
Rochlin was studying writing and theater at the University of Iowa when fellow student Todd Ristau began No Shame as a vehicle for theater students. Last year, Rochlin approached John and Maria Rodaz, directors of Area Stage, with the idea of a regular late-night performance event. Maria Rodaz put Rochlin in contact with Bronwyn Mills, who was looking for a home for a comic monologue, and No Shame was launched a year ago this month.
A Catch-22
"There was very little performance art and experimental theater here," Rochlin said. "It was a Catch-22; there wasn't an audience for it, and there wasn't an audience for it because there wasn't any of this kind of theater."
There's a tolerant willingness to find the spark of invention or enjoyable absurdity, and the audience (many of them repeat attendees) seems willing to share in the venture, laughing while narrators ad-lib and read scripts by flashlight, hooting in recognition for favorite regular performers. "'Dare to fail' is our motto," Rochlin says.
Last fall, Rochlin and Mills formed the No Shame Players, a 10-member troupe of writers and actors that creates more elaborate original material and assures a show every week (depending on volunteers has sent Mills frantically calling for performers). Some of the troupe's more involved creations have been Rochlin's Beam Me Up, Tie Me Down, the serial with the hitchhiker, Ay Poppi!, a telenovela in which all the characters are oversexed and the cliches range from horrific to hilarious; and the recently launched Nola the Nightcrawler, a thinly viled takeoff on nightlife diva Tara Solomon and the faaaabulous South Beach club world.
Range of experience
There's a wide range of experience in the Players, from professionals like Mark Branche, a New York expatriate whose credits include a national tour of Chorus Line, to fledglings like 20-year-old University of Miami theater student Leila Sbitani and Joanna von Born, who decided to start acting after 10 years as a caterer. But they're all enthusiastic about the opportunities that the group provides. "It's a venue for ensemble work seldom seen in Miami," said Branche. "There's a unity and closeness that allows us to do all kinds of theater."
"For me it's great training," says von Born. "When you have to get up before an audience every week, you learn so fast."
Having the chance to learn what works, for performer and audience, is at the heart of No Shame. "I've seen people who have developed some really hot work," says Rochlin. "More than anything else, that cranks my chain."
No Shame Theater takes place every Friday at 11 p.m. at Area Stage, 645 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. There will be a special two-night anniversary performance featuring the "Best of No Shame" on Feb. 25 and 26.