Thanks to generous supporters, we have raised funds for:
Girls Write Camp is an arts based writing focused camp that combines professional level instruction and small group / personal attention to bolster the confidence, courage, creativity, and collaboration skills of girls and gender expansive youth.
Meet Our Staff
Meet Shannon Ivey MFA AEA
Shannon Ivey MFA, AEA, is the founder of the #whatshesaidproject. Ms. Ivey, from Memphis, TN, is a professional actor, director, educator, Tedx speaker, podcast producer and host, coach, and creative. Ms. Ivey taught theatre and applied storytelling to all ages for over 20 years, and now uses her skills in storytelling in a variety of community building and engagement ways. She holds a BA in Theatre from Mississippi University for Women, and an MFA in Acting from UNC Greensboro.
As an actor, Shannon spent her formative years training first at the W, and her summers in summer stock musical theatre and dinner theatre. After graduate school at UNC Greensboro, Ms. Ivey continued acting musical theatre, but added directing and working with new plays. She would eventually move to Washington DC just shy of her 30th birthday, where a chance karaoke singing would land her an invite only audition at the Kennedy Center. Months later, Shannon would leave DC for a year long national tour based at the Kennedy Center.
After touring, Shannon accepted a position leading a college theatre program and teaching full time at the College of the Albemarle. In 2011, Shannon accepted a tenure track position at South Carolina State University where she later founded a Theatre of the Oppressed student Forum Theatre troupe. In 2015, she was invited to share that work at TEDx ColumbiaSC. That recorded performance has been viewed over 50K times.
In 2015, Shannon coordinated the first Moth style Story Slam Series in South Carolina, supported by the NEA and an SC Arts Commission. These continued in Columbia, SC under the names Soda City Story Slam and the #whatshesaidproject. These continue to this day as a podcast with the same name.
In 2016, Ms. Ivey premiered a solo show “Natural Disasters of the Human Kind” which premiered at Indie Grits Film Festival and then toured the country for the next year. She followed this with a multi-media installation called “The Dirt Project” which premiered at Indie Grits in 2019.
Shannon currently resides in Columbia, SC with her daughter, Zoe and pandemic pooch, Buster where she is trying to grow food in her yard like her grandmother did.
Meet Martha Hearn,
our Featured Theatre Instructor!
Martha Hearn is a theatre artist and educator. She is the artistic director for The Mothers Comedy Group (2020 Free Times Best of Columbia) as well as a performer and writer for their improv and sketch shows. Martha has studied and performed improv with The Second City in Chicago and The Upright Citizens Brigade in NYC. She is a proud company member of Trustus Theatre. You may have seen her onstage at Trustus in Hand to God, BOY, and Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberly. Martha is the theatre teacher at Hand Middle School. She was awarded the South Carolina Theatre Association’s Mentor Theatre Teacher of the Year in 2019. She holds a Masters in Educational Theatre from CCNY and a Bachelors in Theatre from the Univ. of South Carolina Honors College.