Open Mic, a student-led program that allows Camas High School (CHS) students to express themselves and their musical or performative talent onstage has managed to attract increasingly large audiences and many diverse student performers.
“Every early release Wednesday during the lunch period in the theater, we host an Open Mic, which is multiple student performers coming into the theater and they have…anywhere from three to five minutes to perform any song or act of their choice,” CHS senior and Open Mic director Elizabeth May Williams said.
Williams is also the head of the CHS Songwriters Club, which encourages student performers and musical artists to come up with original music and share it with their peers. Williams and several regular performers and volunteers manage the program and its performers and events.
“We set up mics, we set up amps for them, we set up drum kits and the PA system, everything is provided for them…and we have a lot of people showing up to them, so it’s a lot of fun,” Williams said.
Williams started the project at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.
“Mr. Chessin [CHS choir teacher and student educator Grammy nominee] really wanted to see more student involvement, with, like, performances and musical performances, right? So he was like ‘Ellie [Elizibeth Williams], we should host Open Mics and we should sponsor it through Songwriting Club so that you can get more people to go to your club’, so I was like ‘OK!’” Williams said.
“I’ve performed at probably every Open Mic we’ve done this year, probably six, seven or eight of them since September,’ youth hip-hop artist and CHS sophomore JT Tuason said.
Performers who create original content, like Tuason, say that the Open Mic program has allowed them to reach a wider audience and share their music with more people.
“It’s given me a good outlet to perform and kind of feel out some songs, it’s been great to promote my music and perform older songs that I never had a chance to perform when I made them,”
Tuason said.
Unlike Tuason and a few other dedicated regulars, most performers don’t generally show up to every Open Mic, and most perform covers of popular music rather than creating their original songs.
“There’s a lot of really good performers out there, a lot of very talented people – come to the Camas Open Mic!,” Tuason said.
It doesn’t look like the program will be going away anytime soon.
“The turnout has been pretty consistent all throughout the year and the morning announcements do a great job of advertising it, so we get… the same amount of people pretty much every time, and I do hope that those numbers increase, especially later in the year when we get more people interested,” Williams said.
The growing popularity of the event is becoming evident, and as student turnout increases so does the number of performers and variety of events.
“I love Open Mic!” Williams said.
