from The Hollins Pub - circa 2004

No Shame
by Laurel Hudgins





Hollins Junior Courtney Campbell has a two minute video of her on the internet, and no, it isn't one of those videos. Campbell is seen on stage, cute, charming, giggling as she puts a can of Cherry Coke on a stool beside her, and making small talk with the audience. But all shyness disappears when she launches a crafty limerick extolling the virtues of Cherry Coke, and how buying them in the study lounge is integral to actually studying. It's Shell Silverstein for the college crowd, and when Campbell hits her poem's high note, "I look at the button, but something's not right / My Cherry Coke has been replaced by aƒTropical Sprite?!" it's clear she is the poet laureate of rhyming couplets about soda.

Welcome to two minutes of No Shame Theatre.

Brazen, unconventional, and eclectic, No Shame is a new kind of theatre. Started, like so many great things, in the bed of a pick-up truck, No Shame performances are now nationwide. The basic premise is that anyone who wants to has a chance to perform in front of an audience for 3 5 minutes. You don't have to try out, just sign up, get on stage and go. The only rules? It has to be original, between 3 5 minutes and not break any laws.

With so little guidelines, the line-up at a night at No Shame is bound to be something for everyone. This might be the reason that Roanoke's No Shame Theatre is so popular. Started in part with Roanoke's legendary Mill Mountain Theatre, No Shame has become a weekly not-to-miss event for many people in Roanoke. Every Friday night, people begin to crowd the Waldron Stage at on East Church Ave., downtown, around 10:00 pm, the time that nightly scripts are accepted. Those who wish to perform need to be one of the first fifteen in line to perform on that night, and its first come, first serve. Around 11:00 the show begins, and what comes next is anybody's guess.

"It's something different, I can say that," says Leigh Corbell, a first-year who saw No Shame in October with friends. "I had fun, and even though I'd never be up there, it was cool what people did."

Campbell, for example, being one of the people who braved the audience with her true story turned poem. She wrote her Ode To Cherry Coke after it was replaced in the study lounge soda machine by Tropical Sprite.

"And Tropical Sprite is so gross!" Campbell said, laughing. "It was a hard time, but I used poetry to get me out of it."

Campbell is a Roanoke native who transferred to Hollins University in 2003 after two years at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She had friends that were in No Shame, and after seeing them perform, she decided to get in on the action herself with her poem.

The limerick was so well-received that not only did she get a video on the No Shame website, she was asked to perform her poem when No Shame Theatre did an 8 pm show at a larger theatre. The show was designed to invite the community into the No Shame experience, and show off some of the more talented performers to a community that might find its bedtime around the time No Shame starts.

"I was nervous," said Campbell, "but it was fun. It's No Shame, how can it not be fun?"


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