Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival-goers dance into the night at Clinton Lake State Park at the 2008 event.

Alongside universities and sports, Lawrence is a city best-defined by its arts and entertainment scene.

Throughout the year the Journal-World covered many of the highs and lows that sprang from the active and energetic A&E scene. Features staffers recently revisited these articles and voted on the top 10 A&E stories of 2007.

1. Wakarusa vamoose

After a five-year run in Lawrence shaped by ambition and controversy, the saga of the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival got even more intriguing. First, the June event held at Clinton Lake State Park was plagued by torrential downpours and flooding, leading to the cancellation of high-profile headliners such as Emmylou Harris and Dweezil Zappa. In November, the event was denied the right to move to a ranch in Jefferson County. This option was the result of dissatisfaction Wakarusa organizers had with the Department of Wildlife and Parks over allegedly treating the event differently from the neighboring Country Stampede Music Festival because state leaders didn’t like the “largely hippie crowd.” By December, Wakarusa announced it would be packing up for Mulberry Mountain, a new site in northwest Arkansas. Despite the exodus, Wakarusa will continue to keep its name that was inspired by the Lawrence river. But all the out-of-town dollars will be flowing away from Lawrence next year.

The movie ‘Earthwork’ features actor John Hawkes, left, playing Lawrence artist Stan Herd. The story focuses on the struggles Herd encountered while creating a New York City art project in the early 1990s.

2. “Earthwork” filming

Lawrence enjoyed a taste of Hollywood this summer — albeit one with a decidedly Kansas flavor. The multimillion dollar feature “Earthwork,” written and directed by Lawrence’s Chris Ordal, chronicled the tumultuous experiences of local crop artist Stan Herd when creating a public art piece atop land Donald Trump owned on Manhattan’s west side. Acclaimed character actor John Hawkes (“Deadwood,” “The Perfect Storm”) took on the Herd role. The film was shot primarily around Lawrence, leading the filmmakers to close down a stretch of Massachusetts Street in the process. A massive set featuring graffiti-lined walls (240 feet long and 14 feet high) was fabricated east of town, in what may be the only time in history that Lawrence doubled onscreen for New York City.

Aaron Jewell of Ottawa prepares to cue the start of a scene during the filming of “The Only Good Indian” this summer at Watkins Community Museum, 1047 Mass.

3. “Only Good Indian” invited to Sundance

A drama focusing on a dark part of Haskell Indian Nations University’s past was selected from more than 9,000 entries to be included in the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The picture (headlined by veteran American Indian actor Wes Studi) was directed by Kansas University associate professor Kevin Willmott and Lawrence writer Tom Carmody. This marked the second time Willmott has been invited to Robert Redford’s prestigious festival. In 2004, his film “C.S.A. — The Confederate States of America” played at Sundance and was subsequently bought and distributed internationally, helping to usher in the burgeoning Lawrence film scene.

David Leamon took over as executive director of the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H., in November.

4. Leamon hiring

Following an 11-month search, Topekan David Leamon was selected as the executive director of the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H. This represented the first new person at the position since Ann Evans retired in 2007 after a 33-year tenure. Leamon actually came out of a 2005 retirement to take the job. He previously had spent most of his career in library administration, notably in San Antonio and Topeka, where he helped build a state-of-the-art facility. Leamon said he hoped to “rekindle that excitement” the arts center experienced when it opened its current building in 2001.

5. Gallery greetings

Although 2006 heralded a variety of local art gallery closings, 2008 signaled a rebirth with DotDotDot Art Space, The Lawrence Percolator and Wonderfair Art Gallery & How! among the additions to the thriving scene. And at the beginning of September, Kansas University’s School of Fine Arts unveiled the Red Door Art Gallery in the popular Crossroads District of Kansas City, Mo. — the first exhibition space dedicated to showcasing work created by its students and faculty.

Jeanne Averill, left, and Ric Averill co-founded Seem-to-be-Players, a local children's drama group, that called calling it quits this April. The group celebrated its 35th anniversary with a performance of Puss

6. Seem-to-be Players’ curtain call

In 1973, a children’s theater troupe was founded under the name Mead Hall Players, hearkening back to Medieval feasts. Unfortunately, children had no idea what a mead hall was, and thus the name morphed into Meatball Players. That sense of giving children what they want was what continued to inspire the company that came to be known as the Seem-To-Be Players. But 35 years after its founding, the Lawrence ensemble called it quits following a reunion performance of “Puss in Boots.” “We started a children’s theater at the time because we thought it would be easy and make lots of money for the organization,” said co-founder Ric Averill. “It turned out to be neither easy or make lots of money, but we fell in love with doing theater for children.”

7. Loneker at the multiplex

The cozying relationship between Lawrence and Hollywood was perhaps best encapsulated by Keith Loneker. The longtime local resident and former KU and NFL offensive lineman had been dabbling in acting for more than a decade, and it paid off well in 2008. In April, his face was plastered everywhere in ads and posters for the screwball comedy “Leatherheads,” which re-teamed him with writer-director George Clooney (whom he had worked with on 1998’s “Out of Sight.”) In September, Loneker played a pivotal role in KU grad Neil LaBute’s racial drama “Lakeview Terrace,” sharing most of his scenes with Samuel L. Jackson. The picture opened No. 1 at the box office. Loneker said, “I know I’m never going to be that leading guy, but if somebody writes a story about a really big cat, I know I can be that character guy.”

In the foreground from left KU students Tali Freidman, and Cassandra Hollmann rehearse The

8. KU Theatre premieres

Tony Award-winning composer Mark Hollmann of “Urinetown” fame selected KU as the unlikely venue to open his latest work, “The Girl, the Grouch and the Goat: A Modern Fable.” The musical was based on the ancient fable “Dyskolos,” the Greek word for “grouch.” Equally noteworthy was “Picnic,” an opera written by two KU faculty members based on the 1953 play by William Inge, a native Kansan and 1935 KU graduate. The play coincided with events honoring the 50th anniversary of Murphy Hall, representing one of the few operas in existence to be set in the Midwest.

Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy, left, and drummer Glenn Kotche perform at the corner of Ninth and New Hampshire Streets during the city's first downtown advance ticket concert.

9. Downtown concert experiments

For the first time in Lawrence’s history, the city closed off part of downtown in order to stage an advance ticket concert. Grammy-winning Americana act Wilco headlined the May event, which drew 2,000 to 3,000 fans of all ages to the 900 block of New Hampshire Street. The event was such a success that a two-day concert titled Get Down Town (featuring standouts Ivan Neville and Split Lip Rayfield) attempted a similar tactic in October with equally agreeable results.

10. “The Day After” 25-year anniversary

For many (including then-President Ronald Reagan), the Cold War officially stomped into people’s homes on Nov. 20, 1983. That was when ABC’s “The Day After” became one of the most watched and controversial events of the decade. Billed as a “starkly realistic drama of nuclear confrontation and its devastating effect on a group of average American citizens,” the movie was set and shot in Lawrence during what is still the largest-scale production to ever invade the city. Director Nicholas Meyer, producer Robert Papazian, actor Jeff East and other luminaries gathered at Liberty Hall for the first time in 25 years to screen and discuss the film’s legacy.