ABOUT

Ashley M. Lyle is a homegrown Detroit actor, singer, designer, and activist with a dedicated love for cartoons and magical girl anime. Her love of performing started WAAAAAY back in preschool when her class sang Carole King’s chart-topping song “You’ve Got a Friend.” From there, she performed in multiple school productions that helped to solidify that she was meant to be a performer.

The matcha latte enthusiast studied the Eric Morris Method with her mentor, theatre veteran John Forman, for 6 years before moving on to landing her auditions. She began her professional experience with community theatre, then worked her way up to professional theatres in the local Metro Detroit area. 

She starred in her first professional show in November 2017 in the production, “Who Will Sing For Lena?” – a one-woman show telling the unjustly fatal story of Lena May Baker. Since then, she has performed in multiple professional productions across Michigan including “Merrily We Roll Along”, “Into The Woods”, “Avenue Q”, “The MountainTop”, “Ain’t Misbehavin””, “House on Poe Street”, “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberly”, “Rules for an Active Shooter”, and “Nollywood Dreams”.

Frustrated with the state of Michigan Theatre and its absolute lack of diversity and equity, particularly regarding Black women, Ashley created Black Literature and Art Queens Network (BLAQN) in 2018. She held panels of Black women in different artforms (e.g., burlesque, poetry, comedy, etc.) to discuss the racism they’ve encountered within the Michigan performing community. In 2020, as a response to Black Lives Matter protests and Black Broadway performers voicing their issues of racism in the community, she created a podcast called “Black Queens on Stage” and hosted a forum-like 4-part episode of Michigan Black actors expressing their frustrations with racism in the Michigan theatre community. The episode was very well received and sprouted a statement and workshop created by Ashley and fellow Michigan actor, Dan Johnson, called “Towards an Antiracist Michigan Theatre.”

Ashley is also a brand designer and web developer and owns her own company, Sites By Lyle. She works with Black-owned businesses to help develop their brand and website, and positions them as the experts they are