Chandler Center welcomes artist in residence Ashli St. Armant

Ashli St. Armant has been named as Chandler Center for the Arts Artist in Residence. She’s going to be developing a new musical called “Ordinary Folks” incorporating largely forgotten African American folktales such as “Brer Rabbit,” “The Legend of John Hammond,” “Suki the Mermaid” and infusing the stories with jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues.

During the 3 year residency, she’ll be working here developing the sets, costumes, script, composing music alongside work in the community including workshops/sessions with residents and students, artists surrounding the importance of storytelling.

St. Armant went on to comment about how important this mission is to her because of her research from books such as The Book of Negro Folklore by Langston Hughes and The Annotated African American Folktales by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

“I am digging really deep to find these stories that have been largely hidden from us,” St. Armant said.

“I find that lots of times, African American folks don’t dive into this because it can feel dangerous, it can feel painful, it can feel like we’ve been taken advantage of because of some of this work but I think this is some of our most honest work where we learn that black folks really have been multi-dimensional for all of time. We’ve been creative, we’ve told stories, we have loved and we’ve made songs,” St. Armant said.