2010 Year in Blogging by Bryan Colley

One year ago I became a blogger, a word that didn't sit too well with me. It conjured images of people keeping cat diaries and New Year's journals that never lasted longer than January 14. It was only later that I found out there's a word for what I do: "curator". I liked the sound of that much better. So now your humble curator is spending New Year's Day looking back at 2010.

My daily chore has created 2,702 postings and the blog has an average of 9,200 views a month. Many more people are reading the blog through Facebook and Twitter or in their email or RSS reader. Visits peaked during the KC Fringe Festival, when over 100 show reviews were posted on the KC Stage website. Thanks to a link on the Spring Awakening website, the most popular blog post has been an interview that Spring Awakening star Elizabeth Judd did with the Lied Center.

But rather than talk about the blog stats, I'd like to share some of what I think has been the best local arts coverage from last year.

The Kansas City Star amounts to about a quarter of the content on the blog, and its quality reporting makes the daily paper a dominant source for performing arts news in Kansas City.  Unfortunately, Star articles don't last very long at kansascity.com. They don't even show you where to find an article once the story is archived - you just get a dead link. So looking back at Kansas City's history is not only a difficult endeavor, but it pretty much removes the Star from the world wide web except for the most recent news. This means the voice of authority diminishes rather quickly, along with any readers' comments that might actually make the articles more informative, relevant, entertaining, or factually correct.

The following are the Star articles I felt were particularly interesting, even though the links to many of them no longer work. If you really want to read the articles, you can search for the headlines in the Star archives for free with your library card through the Kansas City Public Library, The Johnson County Public Library, the Mid-Continent Public Library, or the Kansas City, Kansas Public Library.

• Feb 25 "Talent has a second act as musicians make a mark in the theater world": Robert Trussell offered a nice look at artists that straddle artistic boundaries, mostly musicians who frequent the theatre world and vice-versa.
• Apr 12 & Jun 19 "East Coast filmmakers plunge into Missouri’s backwoods for ‘Winter’s Bone’" & "‘Winter’s Bone’ star Jennifer Lawrence draws on dark reserves for her dramatic roles": Robert Butler championed the excellent film Winter's Bone from the start, and now that it's looking like a major Oscar contender, his interviews with director Debra Granik (who came to Kansas City for the film's premiere at FilmFest KC) and star Jennifer Lawrence remains a highlight of the year. Both articles are still available on the Star's website.
• May 26 "Lee’s Summit West drama teacher retiring after 35 years": Emily Jarrett did a great job highlighting the career of Lee's Summit School District's Ben Martin when he retired from teaching theatre.
• May 29 "Local filmmakers take the road less traveled in making Civil War saga": Robert Butler outdid himself with this extensive Star Magazine article on the locally-produced film Arkansas Traveler, still available on the Star website. He even came back at the end of the year for an update on the production. The Blue Springs Journal also gave Arkansas Traveler some outstanding coverage that's also worth reading. Can't wait to see the movie.
• Jun 4 "Jeff Harshbarger taps his bass instincts and others tap his talents": Timothy Finn's extensive profile on musician Jeff Harshbarger's busy, skyrocketing career is well worth reading.
• Jun 5 "Who will be the first KC SuperStar?": This look at the Jewish Community Center's KC SuperStar competition is personal and dramatic. A similar competition held at the Lyceum Theatre was also given great coverage by the Columbia Tribune.
• Sep 2 "Arts groups grapple with education budget cuts": Ann Spivak's look at arts organization budget cuts was some rare hard reporting for the performing arts scene.
• Oct 15 "KC becoming a hub for animation companies": Robert Trussell's coverage of local filmmaking is sporadic, but when he does write something it's usually good. His look at local animation was detailed and informative.
• Nov 5 "Amy Farrand has traveled a reckless road to become a top local musician": Timothy Finn's interview with Amy Farrand is another all-encompassing treat from the Star.
• Dec 4 "Walter Bryant : He has a musical way with TV ads": Lee Hill Kavanaugh gave us a nice look at local composer Walter Bryant.
• Dec 22 "UMKC jazz students loved musical visit to Japan": Steve Penn's article about a group of UMKC jazz students visit to Japan is highlighted by a terrific set of photos from the UMKC Jazz Posterous blog. As of this posting, the article is still live.
• Dec 30 "When you’re Walter Coppage, The Voice is the key": Robert Trussell finished off the year with a great interview with one of our biggest local actors, Walter Coppage. It was a great way to end 2010.

Aside from the Kansas City Star, here are some of the other great blog posts from this past year:

One of the best things to happen on the web in 2010 was kcjazzlark's phenomenal history of the American Jazz Museum, pieced together through 11 blog posts. It is extensively researched and everything that makes the internet great. I was also intrigued by his background history on some local ruins.
 

Another highlight of the year: the University of Kansas explored the creative process with some amazing in-depth video interviews with Steven Eubank, Jeff Church, Paul Hough, and Ron MeGee. Johnson County Community College also did a great video interview with local voice talent Tom Kane. These are all well worth your time.

435 South Magazine offered several great interviews this year, including child actor Willie Aames, who now lives in Olathe, and eight talented Johnson County teenagers.

KC Stage liked University of Missouri Research Board's article on UMKC professor Felicia Londré so much that we asked for permission to reprint it in our March issue so that more people might get a chance to read it. She is the authority on Kansas City's theatrical history, and theatre history in general.

At the end of the semester, the Kansas City Art Institute posted several student animations on Youtube, which I compiled into a blog post (some of which have been deleted, unfortunately). Three of the students even received national attention after their short film "Dried Up" won a student Academy award. It was shown at the first CinemaKC meeting.

The Lyric Opera pointed me to an interview at commandopera.com with Norma star Brenda Harris. Great for opera buffs, it went far beyond the average interview.

Adrianne DeWeese with The Examiner gave us a lovely look at the life of musician Drew Dimmel, now suffering from Parkinson's, and the touching story of U.S. Army Sgt. Chris Holmes getting to see his son perform in The One and Only Santa. She also informed me who the Tamburitzans were. All of it great reading.

An offbeat story in the Lawrence Journal-World told how a group of KU students saved a theatre in Creede, Colorado, and the connection it maintains with the university today.

I was so thrilled by Lawrence High School's lip-dub rivalry with Free State High School, as covered by the Lawrence Journal-World, that it inspired me to co-direct my own lip-dub video for the Kansas City Fringe Festival.

Some arts news from Columbia made it into the blog. Perhaps the most interesting was an article by Aarik Danielsen on conductor Alex Innecco.

Jerry Rapp has done some excellent writing for Review, like his interview with Cowtown Ballroom creators Joe Heyen and Tony Ladesich, but the best has to be his authoritative history of the Calvin Company.

Television news is particularly lousy with arts coverage, not to mention getting anything in-depth, but Tess Koppelman's interview with Tech N9ne on FOX4 is pretty remarkable for a local broadcast station. Unfortunately, the interview has been deleted from Youtube. 

Actor Training Studio guru Andy Garrison gave an extensive three-part interview with Sean Pratt that appeared on suite101.com. Garrison also gave Curtis Smith a hilarious tour of his studio.

Speaking of funny videos, The Unicorn Theatre went far beyond the average show promotion with a short film about Joan Crawford coming to check out A Very Joan Crawford Christmas, and comic upstarts Ogrot made a series of shorts called That's Science before their Fringe Festival debut. Check them out here and here.

The blog dabbled with contemporary music throughout the year, but the field is currently too vast and complex for KC Stage, and it's covered better by other publications. That didn't stop me from curating complete coverage of several local musician's trips to the SXSW festival this year. Best of all is over five gigabytes of free music from the festival, which I've been dipping into all year and haven't heard a bad track yet. As for local blues music, I was impressed with Skaught Peterson's four part interview with musician Brandon Hudspeth at examiner.com.

And that, in a nutshell, is some of the best that the KC Stage blog has offered over the year. I'm really looking forward to what 2011 will bring.

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