Poetry, rap and a scene from a play filled the top floor of Highline College’s library as the Public Speaking Center and Drama Club teamed up for “Fall into Creativity,” an open mic celebrating coming together and letting go.

On Nov. 10 at 2:30 p.m., if you took the elevator to the top floor and made a sharp right, you’d have found yourself at the center’s open mic. Inside the quaint little space, with its yoga-style mirrors and strings of fairy lights, the crowd sat practically shoulder to shoulder due to the good turnout. The atmosphere was highlighted with the karaoke mic/boombox setup and a projector screen with live captions. It was a welcoming, casual set-up, complete with box-loads of pizzas and plenty of soft drinks.

Not only did it have a good audience turnout, but the whole hour was jam-packed with performances of numerous kinds. An assortment of poets, singers and rappers, authors, public announcements, essayists, and enthusiastic audience members. The whole event was kicked off by a cheeky performance from two actors in the Drama Club, from which they pulled a scene from the play “Chasing the Emerald Dream”. The scene detailed two students trying to find resources on campus to help each other (so it was very topical!)

“I thought it would be fun if we had a collaboration with Drama Club,” said Thy Nguyen, the lead tutor of the PSC. “I am a writer myself and really like art. I think organizing this could give a space for students, seeing we are in the mid quarter, and everybody is stressed. I want people to have a safe space where people can share their thoughts and enjoy a little bit of art.”

The open mic event was also a good opportunity for people to plug their clubs, organizations, and activities. Mentions of the Dance Club, Art Meets Activism organization, Arcturus student magazine (two of the performances were published in Arcturus), and the Highline student poem competition were all given shoutouts at the event (as well as, of course, the PSC and the Drama Club).

“This is the ethos, I guess, for all of the parties involved here,” said Ellis Darrow, president of the Drama Club. “We want campus to bring back that creativity scene that it used to have. Highline no longer has a theatre scene, so it lost a very, in my opinion, a very big part of student self-expression. We have a Drama Club now, but it’s still a small club. We want to get the word out. This event is perfect for that.”

The room was bursting with creativity and camaraderie. With so many performances packed into an hour, it was hard to walk out without feeling inspired.

Robin Lashmet, who shared a poem for the upcoming Highline Legislative Breakfast, enjoyed hearing what other performers brought to the mic.

“Everybody who performed was great,” noted Robin Lashmet, one of the speakers for the event who presented a poem for the upcoming Highline Legislative Breakfast. “I loved hearing the variety of performances and what everybody chose to cover. Everybody did a great job making it feel like a welcoming, supportive environment. Those are usually buzzwords, but I mean those to their fullest extent.”