Divas, Ingénues & Vixens Podcast

Divas, Ingénues & Vixens® — S2E19: A Room with an Open Door

Twenty-five years after September 11, Come From Away reminds us that sometimes the story we leave behind begins with the simplest question: What can I offer?

In A Room with an Open Door, Amity Bryson explores the extraordinary response of the people of Gander, Newfoundland—and the music, stories, and acts of ordinary kindness that continue to carry their legacy forward. Inspired by KC Rep’s exceptional production of Come From Away and Jim DeFede’s The Day the World Came to Town, this episode asks not only what happened on September 11, but what happened next.

Broadway actress and Newfoundlander Tina Maddigan Mayer, now playing Bonnie at KC Rep, shares what the musical gets right about home, what she hears in its distinctly Newfoundland score, and the deeply personal intersection of her own lives in Newfoundland and New York. Production stage manager Rachel Dyer takes us behind the scenes to reveal the invisible artistry—and extraordinary collaboration—required to make this story move night after night.

And through it all, music offers something history alone cannot: a place to laugh, to grieve, to remember, and perhaps to feel our way through the things that are hardest to hold.

A meal. A bed. A telephone. A song. A room with an open door.

Maybe legacy begins there.

The Song Is Never Finished

A songwriter creates it. A singer steps inside it. And somewhere between the first note and the last, a song can become something no one quite expected.

Inspired by R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Celebration of the Music of Aretha Franklin at The Ruby Room in Kansas City, Amity follows a musical thread from Otis Redding to Aretha Franklin, from Dolly Parton to Whitney Houston, asking what happens when interpretation becomes discovery—and sometimes transformation.

But there’s one more person in that exchange: you.

Because music happens now. It changes with the voice, the moment, the room and the person listening. Perhaps that’s why the songs we love keep finding new lives—and why, when someone else takes a breath and makes the music live again, the song is never finished.

What happens when someone looks at a small Kansas town and thinks: Why not here?

In Humboldt, Kansas, singer-songwriter and community builder Damaris Kunkler dreamed up the Middle of Everywhere Music Festival—a gathering built not only around great music, but around extraordinary hospitality, creative possibility, and the belief that artists deserve to be valued.

Damaris knows both sides of that equation. A grant writer and community development manager who once wrote songs almost in secret, she eventually found the courage to claim her own voice as a singer-songwriter. Now, that experience shapes the way she welcomes artists—including Emily Hollingshed, Erica McKenzie, Flat Susan and a remarkable lineup of artists making music on this year's festival stages.

But this conversation asks a bigger question: Does music build community—or is the act of making and experiencing music together already an act of community?

It's a story about music, a festival, and one remarkable Kansas town. But it's also about dreaming big, doing the work, and choosing possibility in a world where cynicism can sometimes sound smarter than optimism.

Because sometimes the middle of everywhere isn't a place you find.

It's a place someone has the courage to build.

Nearly fifty years ago, two Kansas City women imagined a stage where women in jazz could be heard—and then they built it.

Author, educator, and musician Carolyn Glenn Brewer joins Amity to share the remarkable history behind her book: Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, 1978–1985 and the vision of founders Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg. Then musicians Eboni Fondren and Alyssa Bell Jackson help bring that legacy into the present—and ask us to imagine what might be possible for the women who come next.

The road to the Women's Jazz Festival's 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2028 begins September 30 with the official launch party, 4:30–7:30 p.m. at Ted's Taproom in Kansas City. Admission is $5.

Honor the women who built the stage. Celebrate the women standing on it today. Imagine who she might become.

We know the green skin, the broom, and the songs. But what happens when you follow Wicked beyond the Broadway stage?

With Wicked returning to Kansas City, Amity revisits Gregory Maguire’s Wicked Years—four novels that transform a familiar Oz story into something much bigger: a journey through identity, legacy, courage, and grace. And throughout the journey, Stephen Schwartz’s unforgettable score becomes an emotional underscore, reminding us that sometimes a melody stays with us long after the story ends.

This isn’t a book report or a musical review. It’s about what happens when we allow a story to change us—and find ourselves eager to tell someone else why it mattered.

Sometimes we read a story. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, the story begins reading us.

Look to the western sky.