This document is intended to fill in some of my participation history with No Shame Theatre at Iowa City during the time I was there, which was September of 1991 to December 1993.

History being what it is, what is recorded here is strictly subjective; meaning that it's mostly what I remember, and memory is always faded and full of holes. But I will do my best to unload what I can definitely recall and hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps as they appear.

WHO'S WHO AT THAT TIME -

I attended the University of Iowa in the fall semester of 1991 as part of the MFA graduate acting class (at that time I was performing under my legal name Todd J. Peterson). My MFA classmates at that time were Robb Barnard, Clint Corley, David Drayer, Liz Davis, Anne Fogarty, Kirsten Fitzgerald, Bill Hairston, Susan Lynsky, Brenda Lawton, Wendi Weber, Gary Widland and David Woodside, all of whom performed different things at No Shame theatre, though some of us, Clint and Robb in particular, were very prolific and I believe Robb also served on the No Shame board for a time.

Other No Shame regulars were the MFA playwrights Laura Quinn, Peter Ullian, Mike Geither, undergraduate students Adam Whisner, Eric Summers, Eric Johnson, Margie Dube', Jen Shepard, Mark Johnson, Brett Neveau, Sean Judge, Eric and Amy Pot, John Smick, Josh Peskay, Shannon McCormick and a whole bunch of other folks that I'm sure I should remember but at this moment cannot.

Also very active during this time was Carolyn "Space" Jacobson, who was studying in the English department, Scott Smith, James Thorn, Bruce Viera and Fred Norberg, all of whom did not attend Iowa but were very active in the Theatre scene there.

I was also very fortunate in that Todd Ristau was finishing his final semester that fall and was active and present throughout my time there, in fact, we were both cast in the main stage production of "Buried Child" in the spring of '93 and in "The Kentucky Cycles" that same summer. Todd is, along with Jeff Goode & Stan Ruth, the founder of it all.

I first heard about No Shame my very first day of school from Robb, who attended a show the year before and was very excited about participating in the show. The thing that I remember most was that he was not really able to describe what it was to me (which may have been more my failing rather than Robb's, I was barely off the farm), other than to say that it was theatre and that it was anything goes. A very apt description, as it turned out.

I don't remember much of the first show in terms of the acts involved, but I do remember being incredibly entertained and most of all, inspired. I believe that I turned to David Woodside that very night and said, "Hey, we can do this!"

WUBBA BUBBA BEGINS -

In the Deadwood bar, after the show, I proposed a sketch for Woodside and myself to do as a team together, outlined the idea and said, "Want to do this?"

Woodside laughed and said, "Only if we call ourselves White Boy Black Boy!" (For the uninformed, I am very white and Woodside is very black.)

Woodside's other stipulation was that we somehow involved our classmate Bill Hairston because, as he put it, "That fucker is fucking funny." I said, "Okay, we'll make him President."

"President of what?" Woodside asked. "President of White Boy Black Boy Productions!" I said. It made sense at the time, and besides, I didn't know what else he could do.

And that's how White-Boy Black-Boy Productions was formed.

I wrote the first sketch out in longhand and Bill typed it up for us on one of the Macs in the computer room, giggling and adding his own jokes to the mix (David was right, Bill was definitely a funny fucker.)

The very first White Boy Black Boy piece I have rewritten from memory, and so it's not that complete but the arc is still there. That first piece is attached here -

WHITE-BOY BLACK BOY

In my very first piece ever done at No Shame, I remember being scared out of my mind, scared so bad it was like a bad case of the shits, and it was unusual to me because I was never scared of anything as an actor. I never had stage fright as an actor, never. Ah, but as I was soon to find out, I wasn't simply an actor anymore.

Bill introduced himself as President of White-Boy Black-Boy Productions "Hereafter known as Wubba-Bubba," something he made up right on the spot and garnered a big laugh. We became known as Wubba-Bubba after that.

I don't remember much of the show because I was shit-scared and shaking, but I know that folks enjoyed it, because they laughed and clapped and because many of them told me so, after the show, and I knew that I'd have to do it again.

MORE WUBBA BUBBA -

We performed six or seven more sketches as Wubba Bubba that year, most of which were lost forever (with a lot of letters and other documents) when my Mac Classic crashed for good in 97. I wrote all of the sketches (David wrote the song) but Bill always added a joke or an idea and he and David would usually go off script during the performance and do something entertaining. Woodside wrote the piece where we got killed, I think.

Before each piece we did, there was usually some sort of introduction that Bill would do as the President, which he would make up on the spot and would almost always be funny (sometimes funnier than the actual written piece itself). One time he introduced us as "Wubba Bubba, which stands for White Boy Black Boy, cause what the fuck else would it be?" This prompted another writer the very next week to list off all the many other things Wubba Bubba could very well stand for. That was a lot of fun that night.

Anyway, some of the pieces I do remember doing were -

"Daddy Webster" which was me playing an adolescent dealing with wet dreams and Bill as my father giving me advice straight out of the dictionary.

"Leave It To Beaver" Mrs. Beaver (played by Anne Fogarty) goes on a menopausal rampage, tying up Ward (Woodside) and setting him on fire as Wally (me) and Beaver (Bill) look on in wonder.

Wubba Bubba song - David wrote and played a song on the piano that all three of us sang.

Some piece where David wanted to know why it was WhiteBoy BlackBoy, why couldn't it be BlackBoy WhiteBoy and Bill response was because Wubba Bubba sounds a lot cooler than Bubba Wubba, which got a big laugh. "Too gay," Bill said, I think.

"That's It" - I don't remember much about this piece, except that it failed spectacularly and that Woodside skipped it (very smart of him, seeing at how the piece was received) and Dave Drayer and Gary Widland were in it with Bill and myself. It was some sort of comment on Voice class, I think I may have been busting on Joe Gilday (the Voice teacher), whom I did not care for. Doesn't matter, if really didn't work and I wrote it.

Some piece we did in which Marge Dube and Jenn Shepard killed us, for some reason that I can't recall, but it seemed like a good idea at that time. Woodside kind of wrote this.

There were others, but those are the ones I remember best. I'm sure that they weren't nearly as good as I remember them, since I was just starting as a writer and everything always seems better once ten years has gone by (except for acne, of course.)

The first White Boy Black Boy piece we performed was also selected for the Best Of No Shame (Fall of 1991). We participated in that show and did the piece without our shirts on.

What a show that one was, a whole lot of very funny pieces that semester, and ended with some spoof of Les Miz. It was a great show. The show was taped for posterity (by Eric Pot, so perhaps he still has it somewhere) and I think I have a copy of that tape in storage back in Iowa (storage being a trunk in my brother's garage that holds all my yearbooks, medals and whatnot).

WUBBA BUBBA DISBANDS -

It was pretty simple, really, but what happened was that David Woodside and I, great friends with each other the first year - we had a rather large falling out (over something small and insignificant, of course), which led to the dissolution of White Boy Black Boy, which was too bad.

We came back for one other piece (I don't know which one it was, maybe the one where we were killed) but for the most part Wubba Bubba was done after our first scholastic year, cemented even more when Bill Hairston decided to drop out of grad school after that first year and move to New York City.

David Woodside and I made up, eventually, and went our own artistic ways. He wrote a couple of pieces at No Shame, something called The Green M & M I believe, and he also wrote and acted in a couple of plays featured in Black Action Theatre. I went on to do some pieces on my own, from the fall of 1992 to spring of 1993.

POSTSCRIPT - WHERE ARE THEY NOW, 2003?

David Woodside - David dropped out of the Iowa program after two years in order to start over with the MFA program at Yale. He always wanted to go Ivy League. He graduated Yale and has gone on to a very successful career as an actor, mostly in television and film. He acts under the name DB Woodside and was a regular on Murder One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the mini-series the Temptations (I also heard he's got a big part on the upcoming season of 24). I hooked up with Dave a couple times when he's been in New York City, he seems very happy with life and where he's going. He's also still writing, I did a reading for him of a screenplay he wrote a couple of years ago.

Bill Hairston - Bill made it to New York City but didn't stay long, opting for an MFA from Ohio State and later made his way to Hollywood. When last I spoke to him, in 1999, Bill was teaching high school English in Los Angeles and was rather deeply involved in scientology. He was still funny, just in a very different way.

ME? - It's been ten years since I left Iowa City, driving to New York City in a truck stuffed with luggage. As for me, I took an internship with Anne Bogart and left Iowa City before my final semester. I changed my name to Joshua James and by the time I finished the internship, I'd decided that I needed to be a writer in New York City. I think I'm still one credit shy of my MFA in Acting. I had my first one acts produced in the city that same year and have been very blessed to have many productions of different plays I have written in New York City and across the country in the years since.

I've written many other things besides plays, but my roots go down to theatre and No Shame. I'm also co-founder of The Defiant Ones, a writing / performance group. Anyone interested in more information on us can email me at Joshua@thedefiantones.com or check the website www.thedefiantones.com for more info.

I can't think of anything else to say about it, at least right now, other than thank you to those that started No Shame and everyone that keeps it going. Hell, writing is now my life, I'm a fucking writer, and who knew that was going to happen the day I walked into theatre B and sat down to watch my very first No Shame show?

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