Emily Foster
Staff Writer
Barnes & Noble will be hosting an open mic on Thursday, Feb. 22, at 5 p.m.
“It’s just a night for people to perform and get their face out there,” said Caroline Hughes, a junior English major from Decatur and a member of the Rubicon and the Creative Writing Guild. “Whether that’s singing or poetry slam, or some people might do stand-up routines.”
The event is free and open to the public, and everyone is invited to perform or just watch the show.
“It’s not just poetry; it’s not just spoken word,” said Myles Webster, a junior secondary education major from Moody and president of Pendulum Art Society. “Open mic platforms are available for any artist to showcase their talent.”
The Open Mic night is the first event of its kind — a collaboration between four campus organizations and the Barnes & Noble cafe. The organizations involved are the Creative Writing Guild, Pendulum Art Society and Rubicon Literary Journal.
The Troy University Art Club will be involved in helping with decorations and will also be putting up a mini art sale.
The organizations hope if students are interested in the Open Mic and the event goes well, this could become a regular event at Barnes & Noble throughout the semester and incorporate contests and prizes.
The cafe will have $5 pizzas, which students can purchase at the event, along with their drinks. Kimberly Drown, the cafe manager at Barnes & Noble, hopes this event will bring more students into the cafe. She encourages any form of performance — participants are only asked to keep it PG.
“The goal is to make sure that everyone has fun and that everyone feels safe and welcome there,” Hughes said.
Pendulum hosted an open mic night at the end of last semester, and it helped to host another with the NAACP at the beginning of the semester. They hope a large and diverse group will come to participate and see the members of various organizations perform.
“The majority of open mic nights on campus are skewed to one side in terms of audience,” Webster said. “I think merging these audiences will definitely test performance capabilities, hopefully enhance us as artists and enhance us as performers.
“This could be an event that plants seeds for future events in which we will merge with other organizations.”
This event is projected to last an hour and a half with guaranteed performances from members of the organizing groups along with the various other students who are interested.
Anyone wishing to participate can either contact Madina Seytmuradova, the president of the Rubicon, at litjournal@troy.edu, or show up the night of the event and put a name on the list.
“I don’t think a lot of the students here have an open way to express themselves,” Drown said. “I know they’re doing it here and there, but they can come to ours and do it quite often if it turns out that this works well.”
