Our story
Heritage Arts and Education is a nonprofit company dedicated to preserving history, community, and the power of in-person storytelling through theatre, music, film, and education.
We collaborate with schools, families, and communities to tell stories through original plays, musicals, docudramas, songs, original soundtracks and films with your people in the spotlight. We create immersive artistic experiences that honor local history while bringing people together in meaningful and memorable ways.
At the heart of our work is a belief that art preserves more than stories — it preserves connection. In a rapidly changing world, we are passionate about protecting the shared human experience of gathering together, creating together, and remembering together.
Heritage Arts and Education was founded by Ashley Sarver Wachter after she found herself increasingly commissioned to write historically based plays and musicals rooted in real communities and real people. Many of these productions evolved into collaborative docudrama projects that blended oral history, music, theatre, and education.
Longtime collaborator Thomas Rankin has composed the orchestrations of many of the company’s productions, helping bring these stories to life. Today, Ashley and her husband Jacob and Thomas and his wife Rylee, serve as the core members of the organization.
The company was recently honored with a Project Excellence Award from the East Tennessee Historical Society for preserving the story of the first female president of an all-male college in 1925 through the production More. Heritage Arts and Education continues to develop new projects that celebrate overlooked histories, strengthen communities, and inspire future generations.
If you would like to support our mission — or if you have a story you believe should be told through song, theatre, film, or live performance — we would love to collaborate.
Contact: ashley@heritageartsandeducation.com or fill out the form below!
Meet our Founder, Ashley Sarver Wachter
Ashley Sarver Wachter is an award-winning director, playwright, and sound designer and currently the program director of Johnson University’s Theatre Program. She specializes in creating original works, including the musical More, which most recently won a Project Excellence Award from the East Tennessee Historical Society for helping to preserve East Tennessee History. She also wrote Still, winner of the 2021 Chicago BroadwayWorld Awards for Best Director and Best Musical and a Dove Award nominee.
Ashley has been commissioned to write musicals for communities and research organizations, including a World War II docudrama about the first women to fly the B-17, performed in the aircraft’s historic home in Urbana, Ohio, and invited to the National Air Force Museum. She has worked on new Broadway development at Playwrights Horizons in New York City and performed with the Smoky Mountain String Band at Dollywood.
As the founder of Heritage Arts & Education, Ashley leads projects that transform local stories and history into works of art. She holds an MFA in Directing from UNC Greensboro, a BA in Multimedia Communication, and an MBA. She also runs ThirtyTwo 7 Studios, the record label that produces the soundtracks for Heritage Arts & Education’s productions.
Her directing credits include: More (JU), A Christmas Carol: Live Radio Play (JU), Our Town (JU), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (JU), White Lightning (Triad Stage), The Wolves (UNCG), All My Sons (UNCG), These Shining Lives, Our Town (ONU), Guys & Dolls, Singin’ in the Rain, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ONU), Romeo & Juliet, Captain Hook (ONU), Frozen Jr. (Timber Theatre Co.), A Piece of My Heart, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Seventeen, The Tempest, The Refugee Women, The Little Mermaid, An Evening of Broadway, and a studio performance of Macbeth scenes.