Divas, Ingénues & Vixens Podcast

We think we know Mimì and Musetta.

One is tender and quiet. The other enters a room determined to be seen. Ingénue and Vixen—easy.

Except these women have never been quite that simple.

In this season-opening collaboration with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Amity sits down with sopranos Gabriella Reyes (Mimì) and Cadie J. Bryan (Musetta) for a conversation about the women at the heart of Puccini's La Bohème—and what happens when we look beyond the archetypes.

They talk about agency and female friendship, the tiny details Puccini leaves in the score, the vulnerability beneath Musetta's fire, and the strength inside Mimì's softness. Gabriella reflects on having inhabited both roles, while Cadie considers what it means to make an iconic character your own: “I don't think the goal can be to be iconic. I think the goal is to be true.”

And then three sopranos get talking about something even bigger: why artists keep choosing beauty when life offers no guarantees, why joy matters precisely when life is uncertain, and how new artists can step into music written more than a century ago and still find themselves waiting there.

La Bohème has survived changing centuries, changing settings, and generations of singers.

Maybe that's because we still recognize these women.

Always look closer.

What does it actually take to build a creative life—and keep choosing it before you know exactly where it will lead?

In While She’s Still Becoming, six Kansas City singer-songwriters get personal about the part of an artist’s life we don’t always see: the work behind the song, the people who help us believe, the patience to grow at our own pace, and the rest, space, support, and freedom that keep creativity alive.

Amity sits down with Brooke Mertz, Haley Burke, Miki P., Kristin Hamilton, Lucy Gray, and Emma Jo for a conversation about imposter syndrome, creative ownership, vulnerability, joy, ambition—and the dreams that are still getting bigger.

These are artists in different places, with different stories and different definitions of success. But each is still working. Still learning herself. Still making the music. Still dreaming.

And maybe we shouldn’t wait until someone becomes a “legend” to start paying attention.

All six artists take the stage Thursday, September 24, for Lyrical Belles: Legends at the Gospel Lounge at Knuckleheads Kansas City.

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.