Director of the Wild Rose Moon, George Schricker said Tuesday, “We are so grateful to Angie Dvorak, Tammy Boys, Beth Stiles, and the entire Teachers Credit Union Foundation for supporting our endeavor to make Historic Downtown Plymouth a destination for the active development of local and regional talent. Open Mic enables us to fulfill our mission of providing Arts in Action in Service to Community. It underpins all our educational goals and demonstrates the strength of the creative process in building a healthy and vibrant culture dedicated to the success of every individual in the community. In addition, all our activities are designed to invite the healthy development of positive communication skills.”
Schricker continued, “We consider our open mic to be the heart of what we do–we like to think of it as the Welcome Wagon of Historic Downtown Plymouth. Our open mic is free and open to performers and listeners of all ages. We actively use Open Mic as an opportunity to find and integrate new creative area performers of all ages in our Wild Rose Moon Radio Hour (Broadcast WTCA 106.1 FM and 1050 AM and on WVPE 88.1 FM), and we are doing the same with our video production, To The Moon and Back. We also offer showcases to various performers who appear on our open mic stage. Although we welcome people performing covers, our main emphasis is on performers who are creating their own original material–be it songs, stories, poems, or theatrical pieces.”
Schrickers closing statement was, “A person who comes to our Open Mic gets to experience our wonderful hospitality department headed by Marcia Heintzberger, Jeanne Pazderka, and Jennifer Read; these individuals provide a table full of goodies and drinks for our open mic guests. Our professional atmosphere is supplied by our high school intern at the digital soundboard, Kaneda Shuppert, our stage manager, Howard Gibbs, our Photographer, Matthew Bergmoser, our Sound Recordist, J.R. Burger, and our videographer, Dan Shuppert–all of them do a superb job helping to make our open mic an enjoyable listening event. Open mic enables us to create an atmosphere where the audience is an integral part of the success of the event, and to that end, our audiences are extremely gracious and loving–welcoming people to our stage regardless of their skill level. Our audiences instinctively recognize that creativity doesn’t develop in a vacuum and that people need the opportunity to try out their material so they can polish and improve it. Open Mic at the Moon is really about teaching every facet of what makes a good performance, knowing that performers and audio and video technicians are always learning from each other–swapping ideas and exchanging skills. If a person wishes to sign up for Open Mic they can go to www.wildrosemoon.com and find the sign up under What We Do. The slots are 15 minutes long and an evening consists of 8 slots. Open Mic begins at 7 p.m. with our host, either, John Bahler, or, Doug Hammond. During the evening we take one 15 minute break. The evening concludes around 9:30 p.m. We regularly have performers from all over the region including Ft. Wayne, South Bend, Elkhart, Goshen, Valparaiso, North Judson, Peru, Walkerton, La Porte, Michigan City, and beyond. Our last Open Mic of the year is on Wednesday, December 19th.”
Persons in the photo are: (kneeling, left to right) J.R. Burger, Michele Schricker, Annika Piazza (standing, left to right) Jennifer Read, Jon Kubley, Vera Tiani, Dan Shuppert, Marcia Heintzberger, Tammy Boys, George Schricker, Beth Stiles, Jim Davis, Brent Martin, Jeanne Pazderka, Jim Yocom
