No Shame Variety Show surprises audiences, keeps traditions
The No Shame Variety Show presented by the Shafer Alliance Laboratory Theater (S.A.L.T.) kicks off the second show of its fifth year this past Friday the Shafer Street Playhouse on campus.
No Shame Variety Show continued its long-running epic "Chef Armada" on Friday night. Photo by Amber-Lynn Taber.
Paislee Winkler
Contributing Writer
The No Shame Variety Show presented by the Shafer Alliance Laboratory Theater (S.A.L.T.) kicks off the second show of its fifth year this past Friday the Shafer Street Playhouse on campus.
The line for No Shame outside the Playhouse door regularly grows so long that S.A.L.T. members have to turn people away.
“It’s a blessing and a curse; we have to follow fire code of only 150 people in the theater,” Kyle Raiche, senior theater major and the host of No Shame, said.
Shortcuts do exist to bypass the No Shame line: During the last performance, audience members who brought school supplies to donate to dosomething.org, a charity organization, were allowed to cut to the front.
“We (S.A.L.T) try to give back to the community – like in the winter months, we ask for canned food,” Raiche said.
The audience started off the show according to tradition on Friday night, applauding and chanting the host’s name and singing the chorus to the opening song.
No Shame does not have a set program, and the set list is a surprise to the audience. However, there are some long-running traditions, like “Chef Armada,” which has run since No Shame’s inception, a post-show roast and the improv group, “Foreign Exchange.”
Austin Graham Seay, the senior theater major who plays “Chef White,” described Chef Armada as “One of those things where it just kept getting passed down to people year after year until it became ingrained in No Shame.”
“People love seeing their friends as villains, ridiculous plot lines and epic fights,” he said.
The skit involves copious stage combat with very little dialogue and usually returns for three acts in one show. Glenn Jodun, junior photography major, is a longtime fan of Chef Armada.
“It is really random, and you don’t have to see every episode because it is just that random,” he said.
The next show is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 30 at 11 p.m. Sign-up sheets are available to any interested participants in the Green Room of the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts under the S.A.L.T bulletin board.
