Open mic nights back in Chennai

Kommune’s popular open mic Tuesdays that is aimed at creating a community of budding artists are back with a decent crowd. B Uday Kiran Reddy, Kommune’s marketing manager, tells DT Next, “Kommune’s open mic concept is different from other open mics in the city. Poets, rappers, singers, and musicians, can come and perform at our open mics and if we like their performances, we will host them for our future shows. This platform is created to support and showcase talented budding and independent artists from the city. Not just performers, even our regular audience was looking forward to the Tuesday open mics after the lockdown relaxations. When we re-opened after the COVID lockdown, we didn’t expect a huge turnout. But to our surprise, we had a decent audience to watch the shows.”

He observes that open mics are slowly picking up. “Initially, we had only ten performers, but on Tuesday, we had around 35-40 artists.” There are many regulars at Backyard’s open mic sessions during the weekends. On October 1, they will be hosting an open mic called Rewrite from 7 to 8.30 pm. Abhirami Rao, who is hosting the open mic, says, “At this open mic, performers/artists can recreate their favourite things, be it movies, TV shows, or songs. They can rewrite song lyrics, narrate fairy tales as poems, stand-up routines as songs and so on. This event is a space to experiment and explore how different art forms can influence each other and how performance can find a home in more than just one kind of art. This open-mic challenges artists to step into the shoes of the person/piece of art they’re inspired by and make their own story.”

This open mic is a part of a series planned by Backyard, where they collaborate with different hosts and come out with different themes and ideas.