Open Mic Night With Frostburg Alumni Keenan Scott II

After graduating twelve years ago, Frostburg alumni Keenan Scott II has returned to direct his play, Thoughts of a Colored Man, at Frostburg State University. Scott wrote much of his play during his time as a student at FSU, and it was originally performed at Frostburg’s performing arts center. Thoughts of a Colored Man was performed on Broadway during the 2021 season.

On February 16th, Keenan hosted an open mic night at the Lane center. After several stirring performances by Frostburg students and locals, and an introduction by English professor Gerry LaFemina, Keenan spoke.

“It’s good to be back. Haven’t been back in twelve years. Campus looks completely different, feels like I don’t know where I’m going.”

Keenan went on to tell his experiences with open mic nights.

“I’m fifteen, it’s the early two thousands. I’m playing ball year round right, I’m thinking I’m going to the NBA. But my sister’s boyfriend at the time used to see me writing at the house. He was scared to go to the club by himself. We lived outside of DC. So I go to the club in DC. It’s packed, everybody’s grown, so I’m nervous already. I’m thinking, why did I do this?

They call my name; I go up. At the time compared to these adults my poem was very…elementary. I closed my eyes cause I was so nervous, I didn’t even wanna look at the crowd. I end up forgetting my poem on stage. I open my eyes and it looked like there was a thousand people in there. I remember the women like, “You got it baby! Keep going!” which made me more nervous. So I fumbled, stuttered though, and I was like, “I’m never doing that again.” But I’m too competitive for that. Ironically, that same year I got cut from the basketball team. So now I have extra time on my hands, now I have to redeem myself. So I just took my competitive energy that I had on the court and I moved it to performing. I don’t know nothing, I don’t know how to be on stage, so I study for four, five months

Time passes. I’m 16 I go back to DC to a smaller club, probably about ten people in there, and I did my thing. And those ten people cheered. So now I’m like, okay, I did better this time, maybe I might have something. I got bit by that performing bug.

So I kept on doing that for the next threeish years, going through DC, sneaking in clubs cause I wasn’t old enough to be there. But I started to get known, cause I was the youngest kid on the scene. It was like this double life I was living in high school, during the day going to class, at night I’m figuring out which open mic is in DC. So name a club, I’ve probably been there.”

Keenan said his original plan was to go straight to New York and act, “That didn’t happen, cause it don’t work like that… and I came to Frostburg kicking and screaming. Alright, I wanna get into film. Someone said, “If you wanna do film you gotta study theatre, cause those are the best actors.” So, got into the theatre department. As you can see, there’s no city scene here. I was like, I know they’re not gonna have no open mics up there.”

They did, though, have open mics. Keenan began performing in open mic nights at the Lane center, eventually becoming the host.

“So that started my three years of doing open mic with UPC. Great show, it was a time, it was a thing when I was here. And that became my thing while I was here,and that fulfilled my poetry outlet.”

Keenan spoke on the upcoming production of his play.

“It’s a full circle moment, and I knew I always wanted to bring it back after all of these years. So it’s a blessing to be able to bring the play back with the help of the theatre and dance department and my professor Nicole Mattis.”

Auditions for Frostburg’s production of Thoughts of a Colored Man will be held in PAC 224 February 17th from 6-8pm and February 18th from 1-4pm.