Queer artists feel at home among an inclusive audience in the recently concluded first edition of The Queering Mic, an open mic for queer people to express themselves safely.
Queer artists feel at home among an inclusive audience in the recently concluded first edition of The Queering Mic, an open mic for queer people to express themselves safely.
There just aren’t enough safe places for queer people to share their stories through art, poetry or humor. It was this controversial question that prompted Abhirami Rao and Rudra Jayachandran to come up with Queering Mic, an open mic for queer artists to showcase their work or even talk about themselves. “The whole point of this is that there are no judgments, no expectations. You are coming here to do something that you want to do in front of an audience that is meant to listen to you,” said city-based poetry and says Abhiram, co-founder of An Unexplored Mike (@anunexploredmic), a storytelling organization.
The event was jointly organized by Kizhinja Kagitham (@kizhinja_kaagitham), an organization that aims to give a platform to amateur writers in Chennai to showcase their work. Through The Queering Mic, the organizers intend to amplify the voices of the queer community and create an environment where they are comfortable sharing stories with inclusive, accepting audiences.
“While we appreciate colleagues coming out and telling stories about queerness, we want queer people to tell their stories however they want. As a queer person, I’m quite shy, I can easily Wouldn’t bring up a strange subject unless it was a group of my closest friends. So we were very insistent, we wanted only queer actors,” says Abhiram.
Pragati Shankar on stage
The recently concluded event saw nine participants talk about their personal stories, their journey to find themselves, and their sexuality and gender. While some performances were on the mild side, others shared how disconnected they felt at times. Others had an inherent anger at the purpose of a world that separated them from their loved ones.
“It was my first queer incident outside my immediate social circle and it was a very positive experience. The way everyone spoke and behaved put me at ease, to the point where I talked about my own trauma, which is surprising to me,” says Chand (name changed), a We caught up with the participant who became an audience member.
In the event, people shared their experiences of discovering their sexuality and gender identity at a later stage of life, sometimes even after marriage and having children. Queering Mike gives people a place to talk about their journeys of confusion about their sexuality and gender identity, realization, and, ultimately, who they are.
An aspiring comedian felt that The Queering Mic was the best place to try out some of his queer material because he was apprehensive about how he would be received by audiences at other open mics. After his hilarious set about the transphobic comedian and the evolution of his gender identity on the pandemic, this is what he had to say – “I am really glad places like this exist. They are rare and there should be more of them. Many people have different stories and they should all be celebrated.
Abhirami is planning to make this a frequent event, with The Queering Mike set to return soon.