Leave it at the Mic is a monthly open mic for people living with mental health conditions. Any format, any medium — stand-up, poetry, singing, dancing, improv, storytelling, performance art. You share what you need to share. You leave it at the mic.
Who it’s for
People living with mental health conditions — depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and others. Friends and allies are welcome too. You don’t have to perform. You can come to listen, to support, to be in a room where the subject isn’t taboo. Everyone is welcome. No one is required to explain themselves.
Why we keep doing it
Mental health conditions don’t go away on a schedule. Neither does the need for a space to speak about them openly and without shame. We created Leave it at the Mic because that space didn’t exist consistently in Austin. We kept doing it because people kept coming back. That’s the only metric that matters.
A note on documentation
We don’t photograph Leave it at the Mic. This is a promise we made to this community from the beginning. Safety comes before documentation. Ticket sales. Press coverage. None of it matters more than the trust of the people in that room. What happened here stays here — except for the fact that it happened, consistently, because the need was real.
The record
Leave it at the Mic has run since 2017. Monthly. Through the pandemic it paused — and then resumed. Artists, first-timers, people who had never spoken about their condition publicly before. A room that kept showing up because the people in it needed it to.