Paul Green (playwright)
Paul Green | |
---|---|
Period | Expressionist |
Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1927) |
Spouse | Elizabeth Lay |
Paul Eliot Green (March 17, 1894 – May 4, 1981) was an American playwright whose work includes historical dramas 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, which was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1926-1927.
His play
Biography
Born in Buies Creek, in Harnett County, near Lillington, North Carolina, Green was educated at Buies Creek Academy. (It developed as what is now known as Campbell University). He went on to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he joined the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies and the Carolina Playmakers. 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
Green's The
Expressionism
But Green had begun to shift 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. They were never professionally produced in New York.
During the summer of 1936, 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. The play closed after 68 performances.
Outdoor drama
Green created a new dramatic form that he called
Among Green's other outdoor symphonic dramas are Faith of Our Fathers, Wilderness Road,
The cabin
In 1936, Green noticed a small log cabin standing in a rural area of North Carolina―he bought it, had it taken apart, moved, and put back together at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He then used the cabin as a writing retreat. After his death, the cabin was moved to the North Carolina Botanical Garden where it is preserved as an exhibit open to the public.[5]
Other artistic endeavors
Green also wrote screenplays: The Cabin in the Cotton (1932) and State Fair (1933). He also wrote extensively on the subject of his beloved North Carolina. He helped Richard Wright adapt his novel Native Son for the stage in 1940.
Green founded the
See also
References
- Kenny, Vincent S. (1971). Paul Green. New York: Twayne. ISBN 0-89197-880-1.
- Lazenby, Walter S. (1970). Paul Green. Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughan. ISBN 0-8114-3890-2.
Notes
- ^ Green, Paul. The Lord’s Will, and Other Carolina Plays, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1925.
- Roper, John HerbertPaul Green, Playwright of the Real South, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. p. 83.
- ^ Speak Low (when you speak of love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya
- ^ A Southern Life: Letters of Paul Green, 1916–1981, p. 258
- ^ [1] "Paul Green Cabin". North Carolina Botanical Garden Foundation website
External links
- Works by Paul Green at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Paul Green at Internet Archive
- Paul Eliot Green at the Internet Broadway Database
- Paul Eliot Green at IMDb
- Paul Green Papers Inventory, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- 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[permanent dead link] at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro