Spotlight on 2nd Year Liv Matthews

The 25th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival is almost here! The featured, Thesis Productions of our Third Year MFA Playwrights debut tonight and run through this weekend, April 18th-20th, and next, April 24th-27th in Kantner Hall on the Elizabeth Evans Baker Stage. To celebrate the opening of the featured productions, and leading up to the festival staged readings on the 25th, 26th, and 27th, we will be featuring daily spotlights on Ohio University’s nine MFA Playwrights.

Name: Liv Matthews

Age: 26

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Hometown: Clermont, Florida

Undergrad: Rollins College (Winter Park, FL)

Favorite Sports team: the 2018-2019 NBA Southeast Division Champions, the Orlando Magic ✨

“Fun fact” related to Here Lies Vivienne Greene: The first woman to operate a funeral home in the United States was Henrietta Bowers Duterte, an African-American woman from Philadelphia. She took over her husband’s business when he passed in 1858. Not only was she a funeral director, but she was an abolitionist whose her funeral home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. She hid runaway slaves either in coffins or disguised them as mourners in funeral processions.

Twitter/Instagram: @Write2Liv

New Play Exchange: Liv Matthews

See Liv’s staged reading of Here Lies Vivienne Greene

Directed by Jeanette L. Buck

4:00 p.m. – Thursday, April 25th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

In 1956, recently certified mortician Vivienne Greene is next in line to inherit the Jackson and Sons Funeral Home from her Uncle Zeke. Before she can take over, Vivienne is presented with one more test mortuary school never prepared her for: after a young boy is brutally attacked, Vivienne must smuggle him out of their small Georgia town before he is found by a local mob. Fearful of losing the funeral home and her own life, Vivienne must look to her past to find that death may be a second chance at life.

#SQPlayFest #SQPlayfest25