Prentiss Matthews (He / Him)

Meet Prentiss Matthews

Prentiss Matthews III is a multi-hyphenated theatre artist. He is an actor, playwright, director, and teaching artist. Prentiss heard about The Union after he applied for the Populus Fund Emergency Funds grant in 2021. As a Fellow at The Union for Contemporary Art, his focus is to dive into his playwriting skills. As a playwright, Prentiss values thought-provoking work that delivers a powerful message that touches on themes of social change, LGBTQ+ representation, and Blackness. His goal as a playwright is to humanize voices that have been overlooked, marginalized, or generalized in theatre.

Prentiss earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre from Valdosta State University in May of 2020, and since graduation, he has been on the go as an emerging artist. In June of 2020, Prentiss self-produced a livestream of his original play, The Gay Roommate, about two young men who are roommates and at odds because they come from two different worlds. One roommate is straight, and the other roommate is gay. The play touches on themes of tolerance, homophobia, self-acceptance, friendship, and personal growth. Later, Prentiss was commissioned by Kenny Leon’s True Color’s Theatre Company to do a scene from The Gay Roommate to showcase the theme of joy and pain during their 2021 season. If you would like to check out that scene, CLICK HERE.

In December of 2020, Prentiss also directed, cast, and produced a livestream of another one of his plays: Twas the Night Before Bah-humbug. This work is a modern re-telling of the Charles Dickens classic but with a multicultural twist. The play centers upon a young Black boy who discovers that he is the modern Scrooge. This work is a family-friendly play created to reach Black families. The 2020 livestream production of Twas the Night Before Bah-humbug was sponsored by The Counter Narrative Project, Georgia Military College, and Valdosta State University’s Poetry Out Loud Organization.

Prentiss is currently a Teaching Artist and Company Actor at The Rose Theater and is a Board Member at The Counter Narrative Project, a non-profit organization created to center, uplift, educate, and support gay/bisexual men of color in the arts, politics, and beyond. Prentiss plans to continue cultivating his artistic skills, expanding his career opportunities, and learning to find joy in every circumstance. As a Georgia native, Prentiss is excited to continue exploring what the arts scene in the Midwest is like.

To learn more about Prentiss, feel free to CLICK HERE to check out his website.

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