At some open-mic nights, audience members enjoy music or poetry. At Saxifrage’s Media Showcase, attendees didn’t have to choose between one or the other.
Pacific Lutheran’s annual literary arts magazine, Saxifrage, created the extravaganza, with co-editor seniors Melanie Hering and Chris Mahon as hosts.
Promoted as a multimedia surround-sound experience, approximately 50 students gathered in The Cave last Friday evening to view art and listen to performances that incorporated spoken word and musical elements.
“One of the keystones of the event was having musicians and writers perform at the same time, actually playing music while they’re speaking, to kind of complement the prose or poetry,” Mahon said.
The packed venue featured student produced work, including photography, poems, songs and stories.
“It was cool to have two people working together for a piece,” senior Kristin Hayes, who attended the showcase, said. “It was really engaging.”
Saxifrage worked with the student radio station, LASR, to coordinate performers. “LASR was our liaison for musicians,” Mahon said. The evening included 10 acts.
LASR and Saxifrage have previously worked on projects together. At the end of September, LASR and Saxifrage sponsored an open-mic night with ASPLU. “Hopefully we have ongoing events,” junior Olivia Ash, LASR’s general manager, said.
During spring semester, Saxifrage and LASR will work together to host a joint launch party. There they will release the new volume of the magazine and LASR’s student CD.
Mahon said Saxifrage also plans to host more events this semester. “We’ve gotten some pretty positive feedback from people asking, ‘when are you going to do that again?’” Mahon said. “This was kind of an experimental thing, but I think it turned out really well.”
Mahon and Hering worked with several other organizations on campus to promote the student showcase, including Impact and Mast Student Television. Mast TV produced a commercial for the event, which aired daily on-campus via channel 26 for the two-and-a-half weeks leading up to the Friday showcase. The commercial can be found online at https://mastmedia.plu.edu.
For more information, contact saxifrage@plu.edu or visit the organization’s website, http://saxifrage.plu.edu, to submit art or prose for publication.
Video by Cassady Coulter and Storm Gerlock
