Time: Tue, 06-Feb-2001 23:38:14 GMT     IP: 165.166.96.167

Sorry haven't posted sooner.
On January 26, 01 five people showed up to No Shame. No new 
scripts were brought forth so we had one man do his audition 
piece (Top Dollar's Devil's Night speach from The Crow) and had 
a sing along. It was not what No Shame is traditionally but we 
had a good time.

On Febuary 2, 01 we had three people and two scripts (we almost 
had three scripts but the third one was thirty minuets-we'll cut 
it up for the next few weeks). The first script was "J'ein" by 
Jonathan Wilcox. It was a Brechtien Love story. The second 
was "If a Tree Fell in the Woods" by A.M.Earley. It was 
inspired "Scarcrow" - Melissa Etheridge's tribute to Mathew 
Sheppard. 

A new promotional campaign will go up this or next week to draw 
more people to us.  We'll see.
Take care.

Time: Fri, 16-Feb-2001 02:54:40 GMT     IP: 134.161.69.205

No shamers!!!! So cool that you have No Shame in Charleston now! 
If you want suggestions on how to get it off the ground, feel 
free to email me or any of the other Cedar Falls no shame guys. 
I'll bet the Iowa city people would love to help too... I hear 
they have been known to have waits of over an hour to get in. 
FYI.

Good luck this Friday!!!!! Feel free to rip off my plays if you 
need more performances!

Howard Zimmerle

Time: Tue, 15-May-2001 19:23:09 GMT     IP: 165.166.96.167

Sorry I did not make weekly reports as I had intended to do 
throughout the semester.
We had a core group of seven people who showed up to almost 
every instalment of No Shame. We also had nights where we 
garnered an audience of almost twenty. We cancled No Shame once 
during the entire semester, so that several people could see an 
11pm showing of a play occuring inside the Simmons Center. 
Somehow all the participants ended up at the same event that 
canceled our event.
Throughout the semester the people who consistantly submitted 
works (including plays, poems, songs, and impromptue performance 
peices) included: John Wilcox, Meghan Sullivan, Suzanne Fortney, 
A.M.Earley.
No Shame Charleston's Spring semster closed the Friday before 
the last day of classes. It will resume in the Fall on the 
Friday of the second full week of classes.
Let's see how well it goes then. It felt like a good start these 
last few months.

Time: Sun, 09-Sep-2001 23:43:06 GMT     IP: 165.166.96.167

No Shame Fall 2001 has started off at a slow pace.
In the past two weeks that it has occured: One five minute play 
by Jonathan Wilcox, one monologue by A.M.Earley and three poems 
by Suzanne Fortney were presented. 
To ammuse ourselves and give insentive for people to bring new 
works we did silly stupid things like: stating quotes for a 
choral response of "tra-la," read fortune cookies for a choral 
response of "in bed," and stated the best and worst pick-up 
lines we ever heard or said.
Hopefully next week people will start bringing in new matterial.

Subj:      BoardRoom: re: No Shame Fall '01
Date:     11/2/01 8:39:19 AM Pacific Standard Time
From:     labco@livearts.org (Todd Ristau)
Reply-to: labco@livearts.org
To:  JEFFgoode@aol.com


Time: Fri, 02-Nov-2001 16:38:42 GMT     IP: 64.12.101.151

Hey--hang in there, don't let the difficulties get you down.

Couple of things from the Old Man of the No Shame Hills (I 
started this thing rolling back in 1996).

Its really hard, I have found in setting up a no shame in 
Charlottesville to get people in the south to try new things, 
even in a college town.  Remember, the War of Northern Agression 
was the only revolution in history fought to keep things the way 
they were.

Go to the off campus theatre groups and tell them that its a 
great way to get free advertising for their shows if they come 
and do some original peices they can announce their stuff during 
the announcement portion of the evening.

Do things that make the event seem like a cult--well, it sort of 
is a theatre cult, right?  Call responses from the NS Stage 
manager make people feel like they are part of a community.  We 
always have our SM say the www.noshame.org website during 
announcements as an indication that people can go online to 
dicuss what they see.  Everytime he says the URL everyone in the 
aucidence screams "WHAT'S THAT URL AGAIN?" and he repeats it.  
Its dorky, but people love it and they actually do go to the 
website.  Incidentally, you guys should visit other NS message 
boards too, so that we get a reall national network feeling out 
of this--if we are all no shames, we should talk to each other.  
The original idea was to build a community and the internet is a 
great tool for that.

We also had a slow go getting pieces and audience at first.  One 
thing I did was start clearing out my prop closet.  We sell 
tickets and each one has a number on it.  We hold a door prize 
drawing for a prop every week, and the person who wins is 
challanged to write a piece using that prop.  If they do they get 
to keep it, if they don't we hunt them down and...well, we 
haven't had to do that yet.  We've given away artificial legs, 
anatomically correct baby dolls, toy guns, rubber hands, mauled 
chests, shovels, anything that has been used on stage once.

This is a great way to get people who might not cross from 
audience to performer/writer on their own, but if you establish a 
good feeling of supportive community first, they are not afraid 
to try it, because they know the audience will forgive them if 
its bad and oddly enough, they are usually pretty good.  Because 
every audience member knows there is a chance they will get a 
prop, they actually pay attention to the pieces in a slightly 
different way, picking up "tips" on how to write if they have to, 
and sometimes they get tired of waiting for a prop and just do it 
themselves.

Another important thing is to find a nearby bar or something 
where people can go afterwards to talk about what they saw that 
night.  This really helps make it feel like an event and 
increases trust and community, and the sharing of ideas.  These 
are good things, and you can order soda pop if you don't like 
booze.

If there are some famous people in your neighborhood, find a way 
to approach them and get them to "donate" a peice, which may stir 
interest.  Write lots of pieces in advance so if you have a slow 
night you can pull a few out of your butt and still give the 
audience a decent night of theatre.  If you are a no shame 
producer, you need to be able to make sure you have at least 5 
pieces every friday.  Its rough at first, and you don't want to 
make it look like there is a clique of no shamers--have pieces 
written and pull audience members out to read cold.  That way 
even if you have the same author for three pieces, people see 
different folks on stage.

If you are interested in other unsolicited advice, write me--I'd 
be happy to help in any way I can.

Also, I'm trying to drum up support for a National No Shame 
convention in Iowa City sometime in the coming couple of years.

Your post makes me think a how to kickstart a no shame workshop 
or round table would be useful.

Todd

Subj:      BoardRoom: more ideas from the busybody
Date:     11/2/01 10:09:08 AM Pacific Standard Time
From:     labco@livearts.org (Todd Ristau)
Reply-to: labco@livearts.org
To:  JEFFgoode@aol.com


Time: Fri, 02-Nov-2001 18:08:36 GMT     IP: 64.12.103.167

Hey guys,

Just a few more thoughts, you may have already done this--

Go to some poetry readings and tell the poets you like about No 
Shame--lots of poems make good pieces and lots of poets like to 
be asked to read.  Be sure to tell them one a night though.  
Sometimes you get a guy who comes once, reads all three of his 
books, and never comes back.  I hate that.

Go to see bands or musicians that do original music and ask them 
if they would like to come and do an acoustic song. 

See if there is an improve group in your neighborhood who would 
like a chance to let more people know about them--and use them 
to let more people know about you. 

Go to any area dance place, and tell people you'd be interested 
in having them come and do an original interpretive dance or 
something for No Shame. Dancers like to be talked to, not just 
looked at.

See if there are any magicians in the phone book--ask them if 
they would be interested in doing a trick at no shame once in a 
while.  This would be free advertising for them and neat for 
you.  Chris Mortika in Iowa City used to do some good magic for 
us.

Contact High School theatre teachers and tell them about no 
shame.  If they don't have students who would be itnerested, 
they might be interested themselves.  High School teachers often 
have adult ideas they are not allowed to express in other public 
arenas.

Think as far outside the box as possible, No Shame don't have to 
be all scripts which are little plays and monologues about that 
girl who dumped you, though those are great too.  No Shame can 
be any original performance, and the more you encourage your 
audience to try weird new things, the more exciting your venue 
will be.

I don't know what your situation is regarding sales of booze, 
but in Charlottesville we are lucky enough to have a liquor 
liscence and can tempt people with cheap beeers.  We are NOT 
allowed to advertise this fact, however, so shhhhhhh.....

All press is good press for things like this.  Find a member of 
the moral majority and drag them to this immoral display of 
decadence and devil worship--better yet, drag them onstage to 
read a piece about tasteless acts of love with goats wearing 
leather--then they will blast you in the press and protest you 
with signs--perhaps even buy tickets just to boo you.  Can't 
beat that for publicity.  Nothing is better than getting banned.

And don't beg for people to come do things, that is the kiss of 
death, remember you are offering an OPPORTUNITY to these people, 
make them want to date you, you can't do that by stalking.  
Believe me, I know.

Even if you don't have a best of no shame, find out if there are 
opportunities to get a few really good no shames on other 
programs--like if there is a student event or something, see if 
you can get No Shame on the bill and do three of your best 
peices, telling people there is more where that came from.

And how about public access television?  You may not be able to 
do a bunch of no shames on public access which directly 
advertise a thing you pay money to see, but nothing is wrong 
with doing a public access show and running a blurb at the end 
saying all the pieces were originally concieved and performed at 
No Shame in such and such, with contact info.

Another neat idea, if we get this networking thing going, might 
be to have all the no shames around the country co-ordinate 
an "out of towners" night where we all submit scripts to each 
other and we have a night where Charlottesville does Austin, 
Austin does Cedar Falls, Cedar Falls does Miami, and so on.  
That might me kind of cool, though hard to co-ordinate.

I've got my thinking cap on, tell me if you want me to keep it 
on or shove it up my butt.  In spite of all the other things 
people have asked me to shove up there, I still have room for 
more.

Todd "can't mind his own business" Ristau