Playwright, born near Lillington, North Carolina, USA. After interrupting his studies at the University of North Carolina, where he was a student of Frederick Koch, for service in World War 1, he began to write plays about Southern rural people, often dealing with the problems of African-American as well as white poor folk. He won a Pulitzer for In Abraham's Bosom (1926), which ends in a lynching. His anti-war play, Johnny Johnson (1936), had accompanying music by Kurt Weill, and he dramatized Richard Wright's Native Son (1941) in collaboration with the author. Meanwhile, he had effectively invented what he called a symphonic form of drama which used music, dance, mime, lighting, costumes, and any other theatrical elements to capture some episode or theme in American history. His first such work, The Lost Colony (1937), about the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, NC, would remain his best known. He wrote a number of these historical pageants, usually produced outdoors only at the relevant site, but performed frequently. In addition to his plays, he wrote novels, essays, and film scripts while teaching at the University of North Carolina (192344) and serving as president of the American Folk Festival (193445).
Paul Green (17 March 1894 - 4 May 1981) American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, best known for his depictions of life in North Carolina during the first decades of the twentieth century.
Writings
Born in Lillington, North Carolina and educated at Buies Creek Academy (known today as Campbell University) the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Cornell University, Green first attracted attention with his 1925 one-act play The No 'Count Boy which was produced by the New York Theatre Club. With this success, Green quickly was recognized as one of the leading regional voices in the American theatre.
Green's tragedy of the decline of an old Southern family, The House of Connelly was chosen by the newly formed Group Theatre for its inaugural production. Often compared to Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in its contrast of aristocratic decay and parvenu energy, The House of Connelly was praised by critic Joseph Wood Krutch as Green's finest play to date.
But Green had already begun to move away from the realistic style of his early work. In the 1930s Green largely abandoned the New York theatre, whose commercialism he found distasteful. His experiments in non-realistic drama, Tread the Green Grass (1932) and Shroud My Body Down (1934) both premiered in Chapel Hill, and never were professionally produced in New York.
In 1936, Green returned to the Group Theatre with his pacifist musical play, Johnny Johnson, with a score by Kurt Weill.
Green created a new dramatic form that he called symphonic drama. Much more warmly received was the first and most famous of his outdoor symphonic dramas, The Lost Colony (1937) which is still played during the summer in an outdoor theater at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site near Manteo, North Carolina. Among Green's other outdoor symphonic dramas are Faith of Our Fathers, Wilderness Road, The Founders, Trumpet in the Land, which tells the story of the American massacre of Native American Moravians in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, during the American Revolution, and The Stephen Foster Story which continues to be played each summer in Bardstown, Kentucky.
Other artistic endeavours
Green's output was not only confined to plays, he also wrote on the subject of his beloved North Carolina. Green served as a professor of drama at UNC Chapel Hill until his death in 1981.
User Comments Add a comment…