Slammin’, a musical set in the ’60s through early ’70s, “driven by the Blues” is a new performance conceptualized by Kendrick Hardy, an instructor in the Alabama State University department of theater and dance and written by a college student named Dennis.

As a writing tandem, the play showcases the fictional world of fantastical happenings that involve spoken word poetry, and the blues, the richness of each character’s, life experiences, and testimonials on a journey, which allows one to see how to cope with life,  in other words, “when life gives you lemons you make lemonade.”

I think this is a great time outside of the coping mechanism aspect to look at the richness in the creativity of how African Americans have overcome since coming to this country from West Africa.

There are a number of students who suffer from several mental health like depression and anxiety, and they seem to lack the ability in some areas when it comes to coping mechanisms, so doing this play with spoken word, porch infused with the blues has a measure of a coping mechanism with the ability to overcome by the end of the song and much of the music. Of course, there are some darker sides to the blues but that is not the focus, but when one thinks about modern-day music, a lot of young people out there at eight are depressed, so the blues has the ability to help people recover.