Reese Darko—better known simply as Darko—has been running Saturday S.N.A.P.S. since 2018. Back then, the 31-year-old poet had inherited the open-mic night from the event’s former host at Oasis Cannabis on Industrial Road.
Eventually, Saturday S.N.A.P.S. morphed into Darko’s concept, with help from her open-mic partner Brianna Florian. An acronym for Spiritual Network of Art, Poetry and Self, Saturday S.N.A.P.S. is a place where the community can come to express itself openly and freely, without judgment.
“I came up on this open mic kind of randomly,” says Darko, who previously worked at Oasis. “They used to run a community space in the front where they hosted this monthly open mic. It was really small and quaint, more of a poetry-reading circle.” At the time, Darko, who had been writing poetry since childhood, was just getting acquainted with performing her own spoken word. “I was still very new to it,” she says.
Before she knew it, Darko had become the event host, rebranding it to fit her larger community vision. “It’s never been fully poetry-focused since I took it over,” she explains. “I wanted it to be open to all genres, and not just genres of artistic expression, but five minutes of free expression.”
Darko remembers inviting people to come up on stage and vent for five minutes, or creatively express anything they were feeling at the time. “The only rule is no apologies on the mic,” she says. “You could stand up here for five minutes in silence if you want to, and we could just breathe together. We really try not to close the door on any artistic endeavor.”
Since the pandemic hit, Darko has been livestreaming her open mic from within Downtown’s SPCKRFT Studios, with a small audience and a limited group of performers.
On April 17, Saturday S.N.A.P.S. hosted its first Amplifying Asian Voices event, which featured local Asian artists and poets, streaming on Instagram Live. And even if public events return to normal soon, Darko says she wants to continue livestreaming to provide extra content for the artists.
As the Valley continues opening up, Darko is gearing up for her first Sunday open mic for children—a Kids Takeover event at Ninja Karaoke on May 16.Basically, Darko says, she wants her open mic to be a platform available to all.
“I like to shine [a light] on different people in the city,” Darko says. “It’s a very unorthodox open mic. When I first took over S.N.A.P.S, that’s what I wanted it to be: an open mic for the artists, by the artists.”
Saturday S.N.A.P.S. Kids Takeover May 16, 3 p.m., $20. Ninja Karaoke, 1009 S. Main St,. instagram.com/snapsopenmic
Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!
