Sevens Live! poetry event launches with stream of verse

It was a typical Monday night at Silver Sevens, 4100 Paradise Road. A small line was snaking its way to the buffet, people were trying their luck on the slots and table games, and over in the corner bar, a part-time UNLV instructor was reading a poem in a combination of Middle and Old English.

“I didn’t lead off with that piece,” said Andy Hall, who teaches in the English department at UNLV. “I found over the years that it’s good to start with something funny to get the crowd’s attention.”

Hall was one of the first performers at the new Sevens Live! weekly event at the casino. The spoken-word event is billed as an open mic, held from 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays, but in practice, it’s more curated than a typical open mic event.

“Ideally, we’ll have about six performances of around 10 to 12 minutes each,” said poet Lee Mallory, who organizes the event. “If someone comes in and we don’t have room for them that night, we might ask them to send a YouTube link of something they’ve done, and then we may sign them up for an earlier slot the following week.”

The show includes live music, comedy and poetry. Mallory prefers to have a variety of performers, but some nights, there are more comics than poets or poets than musical acts, so he shuffles it around on the fly, interspersed with music from the house band.

“We’re really lucky to have such a great house band,” Mallory said. “I’d love to just have them end the show with a longer set one of these weeks.”

The show had some rough patches during opening night as Mallory and various other people worked out some of the kinks, but it is rapidly turning into the show he envisions, and the transitions between acts are growing quicker and smoother.

“We’re trying to provide an opening for breakthrough talent,” Mallory said. “We’re bringing in some established performers and poets, also, but it’s exciting to see who shows up and what they can bring to the stage.”

Part of the excitement for longtime poet Mallory is the venue. He’s all too familiar with traditional spoken-art venues, where the audience is primarily made up of spoken word artists waiting to perform. He’s less interested in preaching to the choir than he is in bringing the art form to an unusual space where people may be experiencing live spoken word for the first time. His efforts have been rewarded with surprises such as the week he talked to a performer after he came off the stage.

“He was a wonderful comedian,” Mallory said. “He worked in good taste, he engaged the audience and made the crowd part of the experience. I assumed he might be a professional comic, and I asked him what else he did. He told me that he was a corrections officer. It was great; he totally subverted my expectations.”

So far, the venue has maintained a full house for the event. Mallory initially had to do a lot of promotion to let people know about it, but the crowds are starting to show up because word is getting out that Sevens Live! is a place where attendees never know what is going to happen on stage.

“One week, a woman came up and sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ ” Hall said. “She got a standing ovation.”

Mallory said he’s gotten positive feedback from the venue, and he expects that the show will have staying power. Even as he refines it, he still keeps an eye out for the next surprise.

If the crowds are any indication, he’s not the only one.

To reach East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor, email ataylor@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4532.