It’s a quarter to four on a Friday afternoon, and the halls of Stuyvesant High School are silent. The few students left in the building are in the library.
These students are all waiting for the start of Open Mic, a monthly sharing of creative works that has long been a tradition at Stuyvesant.
“This is my seventh year [at Stuyvesant], and when I arrived it was already in full effect,” English teacher and Open Mic faculty advisor Emily Moore said. “It’s probably been going on for over 20 [years].”
Today, seniors Ezra Glenn and Prameet Kumar are responsible for much of the work that goes into organizing Open Mic.
“It’s really not that hard,” Kumar said. “Me and Ezra start on the Monday of the week of Open Mic. We make copies of sign-up sheets, and we write letters to English teachers encouraging them to talk to their students about Open Mic and to get them to sign up.”
Students are not the only members of the Stuyvesant community involved in Open Mic. Moore and other English teachers help spread the word about Open Mic and encourage students to participate.
“A lot of teachers disregard the sign-up sheets that we put in their mailboxes,” Glenn said. “But some teachers really encourage their students to attend.” Among these enthusiastic English teachers are Moore, Annie Thoms, Jonathan Weil and Vito Bonsignore.
“I became involved in Open Mic when I was taking Creative Nonfiction,” said senior Emily Banks, a frequent Open Mic attendee. “Mr. Weil strongly encouraged me to read my pieces at Open Mic, and you can’t say no to Mr. Weil. Once I realized how fun it was, I started going every time.”
It’s not difficult to see how Open Mic has gained so many avid fans. It is quiet and comfortable in the library, and the October sun streams in through the windows, filling the room with a soft yellow light. The audience is seated in chairs in the center of the library, with the podium placed before the chairs by the window.
“There are only two rules to Open Mic,” Glenn said to the audience. “Keep your reading short, or we’ll have to cut you off. And when you’re done, you have to introduce the next person on the list.”
Glenn calls up the first reader on the list, who begins his piece without a single sign of nerves. Stage fright does not appear to be much of a problem at Open Mic. “Everyone there is so nice and supportive, and you know you’re not the only one who’s nervous,” Banks said.
Though most of the readings are of poetry written by students, participants are welcome to share anything at Open Mic—music, art, short stories, even the works of another author. “A lot of people come just for the great writing their fellow students offer up, both original and borrowed,” said Glenn.
“One of the main draws of Open Mic is the thrill of performance, and the chance to see one’s friends perform,” said Jon Edelman (‘06), a former Open Mic coordinator. “It’s also a really warm, supportive atmosphere. […] It creates the sense of a writing community at Stuy.”
This feeling of openness and support is the heart of Open Mic’s popularity. “I am a huge fan of Open Mic because I feel like it’s one of the most humanizing events that takes place at Stuyvesant,” Moore said.
“Stuyvesant is obviously a very excellent and rigorous and competitive and numbers-based school, […] but Open Mic allows you to really hear the words of your classmates and even sometimes your teachers. I feel like it really gives everyone the sense that we’re all full people with full lives and opinions and ideas, moving around in this building together,” she said.
Unfortunately, not everyone at Stuyvesant takes full advantage of this opportunity. At the Open Mic on October 5, very few freshmen and sophomores were in the audience, and none of the readers were underclassmen.
“Certainly upperclassmen read, one, because they’re more comfortable taking risks in front of big groups of people, and they also read because they’re the students who are allowed to take the creative writing electives, so they’re in classes like Writers’ Workshop,” Moore said.
While it is true that students cannot take any English electives until their junior year, Open Mic offers a unique opportunity for underclassmen to share their creativity. “One really great benefit of Open Mic is that everyone is allowed to read,” Moore said. “So if you are a creative writer […] you have to wait to take creative elective classes, but you can always be a part of Open Mic.”
After the last reader has finished her piece, the audience quietly returns the library’s chairs and tables to their original places, and the podium is whisked away to await the next Friday afternoon when it will be needed again.
