The Saratoga Library Teen Advisory Board (TAB) hosted their biannual Coffeehouse talent show with nine performers. Among them were junior Florence Wei and sophomores Maahi Agarwal, Jenny Jiang and Sarah Jiang
More 60 people attended the show on Nov. 16 in the Saratoga Library Community Room. Coffeehouse is hosted by TAB’s Showcase committee, which usually hosts it near the end of each semester as a relaxing event to destress before finals.
TAB is an organization dedicated to hosting events catered towards teenagers. TAB includes five committees: Showcase, Speaker Series, Social Events, Collaborative Events and Marketing, with each dedicated towards a specific goal. According to TAB Showcase head senior Hanness Yeung, the Coffeehouse talent show has been a TAB tradition for over 20 years.
“Coffeehouse has been a TAB tradition since long before I joined the program to bring out teens’ talent in performance through music, creative speeches and other demonstrative arts,” Yeung said.
Yeung notes that this year’s Coffeehouse’s attendance was noticeably higher than previous years talent shows, attributing the difference to a greater scope in their distribution of advertisement flyers. In the past, similar events that TAB hosted have had fewer attendees, likely due to delayed outreach, which the Showcase committee took into consideration.
“As this is a recurring event, we draw on our previous Coffeehouses to analyze what goes well and what doesn’t,” Yeung said. “From my experience with working with three Coffeehouses at this point, we usually find one of our points for improvement from the previous year is advertising the event earlier, which means we need to come up with a flier earlier.”.
In order to organize these events, Yeung detailed a simple three-step process: brainstorming, flier creation and advertisement. First, the committee finds a suitable date for the event and decides on an appropriate theme. Next, the committee works together to produce an advertising flier, and then distributes those flyers around the local area.
“Our committee works out the details together at our monthly TAB meetings, or by meeting up online and coming up with several crucial details for the event including the date and the theme of the event — which would give us an idea on how to decorate the room. From there, we’ll assign someone to make a flier, mass-produce those fliers and try to get performers,” Yeung said.
To Yeung, hosting Coffeehouse events is not only a fun experience, but is also part of his community obligations: “We do it for the community, as it falls under the responsibility of our committee to host such events,” he said.
During the talent show, Wei performed a cello solo, while Jenny and Sarah performed a violin duet. Agarwal, who performed a solo viola piece, noted that the atmosphere was very lively this year.
“Coffeehouse was a really fun event for me; it was a really chill scenario, and unlike at a solo competition, I went into it just to have fun. It was really nice to see people who are passionate about something coming together,” Agarwal said.
