Paul Green
Encyclopedia
Paul Eliot Green was an American playwright
best known for his depictions of life in North Carolina during the first decades of the twentieth century. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
for his 1927 play, In Abraham's Bosom
.
). He went on to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
where he joined The Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies
. Green also studied at 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. The next year his full-length play In Abraham's Bosom
was produced by the Provincetown Players
and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
. The play was considered remarkable for its depiction of African Americans in the South. Its hero, a man of mixed racial ancestry, finds his idealistic attempts to better the lives of the African Americans around him doomed to failure. With this success, Green quickly was recognized as one of the leading regional voices in the American theatre. His plays were often compared with the folk plays of Irish playwright John Millington Synge
.
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 1928-29 he traveled to Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship
and was impressed by the non-realistic productions that he saw there. He began to experiment with expressionism
and the Epic theatre
of Bertolt Brecht
and Erwin Piscator
. 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.
During the summer of 1936, Green, Cheryl Crawford
, Kurt Weill
and Weill's wife Lotte Lenya
rented an old house in Nichols, Connecticut
near the summer rehearsal headquarters of the Group Theatre at Pine Brook Country Club
. Green returned to the Group Theatre to write his pacifist musical play, Johnny Johnson
, with a score by Kurt Weill. In it, Green experimented with genre
, writing the first act as a comedy, the second as a tragedy, and the third as a satire. It was also during this time that Lotte Lenya
had her first American love affair
with Green.
The production encountered problems of style early on: set designer Donald Oenslager
designed the first act in poetic realism, the second in expressionism, and the final act in an extremely distorted style, director Lee Strasberg
wanted to stage it realistically, and others in the company wanted it to be staged expressionistically throughout. Reviews ranged from the enthusiastic to the dismissive, and it ran for sixty-eight performances.
Green created a new dramatic form that he called symphonic drama. Inspired by historical events, it incorporated music and pageantry, usually for outdoor performance. His first experiment in this form was Roll Sweet Chariot (1934), which ran for a scant four performances on Broadway. 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
. The Lost Colony is the oldest outdoor historical drama in the United States. Among Green's other outdoor symphonic dramas are Faith of Our Fathers, Wilderness Road, The Lone Star, The Common Glory, 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, Cross and Sword
, the state play of Florida, and The Stephen Foster Story which continues to be played each summer in Bardstown, Kentucky
.
The little one-room house where he did much of his writing can be seen at the North Carolina Botanical Garden
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
.
for the 1932 film The Cabin in the Cotton
and also wrote extensively on the subject of his beloved North Carolina
. He helped Richard Wright
adapt his novel Native Son
to the stage in 1940. He also was a founder of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and the Institute for Outdoor Drama. He served UNESCO
travelling around the world to lecture on human rights
and drama
. Green served as a professor
of drama at UNC until his death in 1981.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
best known for his depictions of life in North Carolina during the first decades of the twentieth century. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
for his 1927 play, In Abraham's Bosom
In Abraham's Bosom
In Abraham's Bosom is a play by American dramatist Paul Green. Its original Broadway run starred Charles Sidney Gilpin as an African-American farmer from North Carolina whose efforts at self-improvement are thwarted by segregation. Green received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work in 1927....
.
Biography
Born in Buies Creek, NC, in Harnett County near Lillington, Green was educated at Buies Creek Academy (known today as Campbell UniversityCampbell University
Campbell University is a coeducational, church-related university in rural North Carolina, USA. Its main campus is located in the community of Buies Creek; its law school moved from Buies Creek to a new campus in the state capital of Raleigh in 2009. Campbell has an approximately equal number of...
). He went on to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
where he joined The Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies
The Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies
The Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, commonly known as Di-Phi, are the debate and literary societies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.- History :...
. Green also studied at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
.
Green first attracted attention with his 1925 one-act play The No 'Count Boy which was produced by the New York Theatre Club. The next year his full-length play In Abraham's Bosom
In Abraham's Bosom
In Abraham's Bosom is a play by American dramatist Paul Green. Its original Broadway run starred Charles Sidney Gilpin as an African-American farmer from North Carolina whose efforts at self-improvement are thwarted by segregation. Green received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work in 1927....
was produced by the Provincetown Players
Provincetown Players
The Provincetown Players was an amateur group of writers and artists who, at the early part of the 20th Century, wanted to see a change in American theatre and created a company committed to producing new plays by exclusively American playwrights...
and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
. The play was considered remarkable for its depiction of African Americans in the South. Its hero, a man of mixed racial ancestry, finds his idealistic attempts to better the lives of the African Americans around him doomed to failure. With this success, Green quickly was recognized as one of the leading regional voices in the American theatre. His plays were often compared with the folk plays of Irish playwright John Millington Synge
John Millington Synge
Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey 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
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...
in its contrast of aristocratic decay and parvenu energy, The House of Connelly was praised by critic Joseph Wood Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch
Joseph Wood Krutch was an American writer, critic, and naturalist.Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, he initially studied at the University of Tennessee and received a masters degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University. After serving in the army in 1918, he travelled in Europe for a year with friend...
as Green's finest play to date.
But Green had already begun to move away from the realistic style of his early work. In 1928-29 he traveled to Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
and was impressed by the non-realistic productions that he saw there. He began to experiment with expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and the Epic theatre
Epic theatre
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...
of Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
and Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...
. 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.
During the summer of 1936, Green, Cheryl Crawford
Cheryl Crawford
Cheryl Crawford was an American theatre producer and director.Born in Akron, Ohio, Crawford majored in drama at Smith College. Following graduation, she moved to New York City and enrolled at the Theatre Guild's school...
, Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
and Weill's wife Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...
rented an old house in Nichols, Connecticut
Nichols, Connecticut
Nichols, a historic village in southeastern Trumbull on the Gold Coast of Fairfield County, was named after the family who maintained a large farm in its center for almost 300 years. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of the village, is listed on the National Register of...
near the summer rehearsal headquarters of the Group Theatre at Pine Brook Country Club
Pine Brook Country Club
-Introduction:Pine Brook Country Club began when Benjamin Plotkin purchased Pinewood Lake and the surrounding countryside on Mischa Hill in the historic village of Nichols, Connecticut. Plotkin built an auditorium with a revolving stage and forty rustic cabins and incorporated as the Pine Brook...
. Green returned to the Group Theatre to write his pacifist musical play, Johnny Johnson
Johnny Johnson (musical)
Johnny Johnson is a musical with a book and lyrics by Paul Green and music by Kurt Weill.Based on Jaroslav Hašek's satiric novel The Good Soldier Švejk, it focuses on a naive and idealistic young man who, despite his pacifist views, leaves his sweetheart Minny Belle Tompkins to fight in Europe in...
, with a score by Kurt Weill. In it, Green experimented with genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
, writing the first act as a comedy, the second as a tragedy, and the third as a satire. It was also during this time that Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...
had her first American love affair
Love Affair
Love Affair is a 1939 American romantic film starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer and featuring Maria Ouspenskaya. It was directed by Leo McCarey and written by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a story by McCarey and Mildred Cram....
with Green.
The production encountered problems of style early on: set designer Donald Oenslager
Donald Oenslager
Donald Oenslager was a celebrated American scenic designer who won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design.-Biography:Oenslager was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and became interested in design while studying in Europe...
designed the first act in poetic realism, the second in expressionism, and the final act in an extremely distorted style, director Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...
wanted to stage it realistically, and others in the company wanted it to be staged expressionistically throughout. Reviews ranged from the enthusiastic to the dismissive, and it ran for sixty-eight performances.
Green created a new dramatic form that he called symphonic drama. Inspired by historical events, it incorporated music and pageantry, usually for outdoor performance. His first experiment in this form was Roll Sweet Chariot (1934), which ran for a scant four performances on Broadway. Much more warmly received was the first and most famous of his outdoor symphonic dramas, The Lost Colony
Lost Colony (play)
The Lost Colony is a historical play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green about Roanoke, the first English colony in North America. The play is based on the historical accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh's failed attempts to establish a permanent settlement in the 1580s in part of what was...
(1937) which is still played during the summer in an outdoor theater at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site near Manteo, North Carolina
Manteo, North Carolina
Manteo is a town in Dare County, North Carolina, United States, located on Roanoke Island. The population was 1,052 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Dare County.-Geography:...
. The Lost Colony is the oldest outdoor historical drama in the United States. Among Green's other outdoor symphonic dramas are Faith of Our Fathers, Wilderness Road, The Lone Star, The Common Glory, The Founders, Trumpet in the Land, which tells the story of the American massacre of Native American Moravians in Gnadenhutten
Gnadenhütten
Gnadenhütten , the name of settlements founded by the German Moravian Church. The word was transliterated as Canatanheat by the missionary John Brainerd in his account.The proper German spelling without the umlaut ü is Gnadenhuetten...
, Ohio, during the American Revolution, Cross and Sword
Cross and Sword
Cross and Sword is a 1965 play by American playwright Paul Green. It is Florida's official state play, having received the designation by the Florida Senate in 1973. It was performed during the summer in St...
, the state play of Florida, and The Stephen Foster Story which continues to be played each summer in Bardstown, Kentucky
Bardstown, Kentucky
As of the census of 2010, there were 11,700 people, 4,712 households, and 2,949 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 5,113 housing units at an average density of...
.
The little one-room house where he did much of his writing can be seen at the North Carolina Botanical Garden
North Carolina Botanical Garden
The North Carolina Botanical Garden is a botanical garden operated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The primary goal of the Garden is to research, catalog, and promote the native plant species of North Carolina...
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care...
.
Other artistic endeavours
Green's output was not only confined to plays. He penned the screenplayScreenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
for the 1932 film The Cabin in the Cotton
The Cabin in the Cotton
The Cabin in the Cotton is a 1932 American drama film directed by Michael Curtiz. The screenplay by Paul Green is based on the novel of the same title by Harry Harrison Kroll....
and also wrote extensively on the subject of his beloved North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. He helped Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
adapt his novel Native Son
Native Son
Native Son is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s...
to the stage in 1940. He also was a founder of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra and the Institute for Outdoor Drama. He served UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
travelling around the world to lecture on human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
and drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
. Green served as a professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of drama at UNC until his death in 1981.
External links
- Paul Green Papers Inventory, in the Southern Historical CollectionSouthern Historical CollectionThe Southern Historical Collection is a repository of distinct archival collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which document the culture and history of the American South...
, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States... - Oral History Interview with Paul Green at Oral Histories of the American South
- Bio at ibiblio.org
- Roanoke Island Historical Association: The Lost Colony
- Guide to the Paul Green papers at the University of Oregon
- North Carolina Award citation
- Finding Aid for the Paul Eliot Green Papers at the University of North Carolina at GreensboroUniversity of North Carolina at GreensboroThe University of North Carolina at Greensboro , also known as UNC Greensboro, is a public university in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States and is a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina system. The university offers more than 100 undergraduate, 61 master's and 26...