See also
Dramatic and performing arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
| Formation | 1976 |
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| Type | Theatre group |
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| Website | http://www.playmakersrep.org/ |
PlayMakers Repertory Company is the professional theater company in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [1] PlayMakers Repertory Company is the successor of the Carolina Playmakers and is named after the Historic Playmakers Theatre. PlayMakers was founded in 1976 and is affiliated with the Dramatic and performing arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The company consists of residents, guest artists, professional staff and graduate students in the Department for Dramatic Arts at UNC and produces seasons of six main stage productions of contemporary and classical works that run from September to April. PlayMakers Repertory Company has a second stage series, PRC², that examines controversial social and political issues. The company has been acknowledged by the Drama League of New York and American Theatre magazine for being one of the top fifty regional theaters in the country. [2] PlayMakers operates under agreements with the Actors' Equity Association, United Scenic Artists, and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. [3]
In 1918, Professor Frederick Koch came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to teach the university's first courses in playwriting. In that same year, he founded the Carolina Playmakers theater company to produce original plays. [4] Koch and the Playmakers mainly produced what they considered to be "folk plays." Koch defined a folk play as based on "the legends, superstitions, customs, environmental differences, and the vernacular of the common people." He saw them as primarily "realistic and human," and chiefly concerned with "man's conflict with the forces of nature and his simple pleasure in being alive." [5]
Working with folk plays encouraged Koch's students to write about the small communities and rural populations they were likely to be familiar with, and, as in the experience of Paul Green, to address the experiences of "marginalized populations of the South," such as black people and Native Americans. [6]
The Carolina Playmakers began touring locally in 1920, then statewide the following year. In 1922, the first series of Carolina Folk Plays was published, which included five plays written and produced by the Playmakers. In 1925, Smith Hall, a building on campus previously used as a library and ballroom, was remodeled and dedicated as Playmakers Theatre for Playmakers performances. [5] [7]
A number of successful writers and actors honed their craft in the Carolina Playmakers. Novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote and acted in several plays as a UNC student – including taking the title role in The Return of Buck Gavin (which Wolfe himself wrote) in the Playmakers' first bill of plays on March 14 and 15, 1919. [8] Betty Smith, who would later write A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from her home in Chapel Hill, first came to town in 1936 as part of the WPA Federal Theater Project, and wrote many plays for the company. [5] In the late 1940s, Andy Griffith appeared in several Playmakers performances, including Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado and HMS Pinafore. [9]
Other notable writers associated with the Carolina Playmakers include Paul Green, Josefina Niggli, Kermit Hunter, Margaret Bland, John Patric, [10] and Jonathan W. Daniels.
The Historic Playmakers Theatre is a Greek Revival temple designed by New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis as a combined library and ballroom. When it was completed in 1851, it was named Smith Hall in honor of North Carolina Governor Benjamin Smith, who donated land to the university for the building. After use as a laboratory, bath house, and law school, it became a theater in 1925. The theater is the home of the Carolina Playmakers, although their successor, Playmakers Repertory Company, uses the Paul Green Theatre as its primary venue. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973. The Historic Playmakers Theatre is also one of the oldest buildings dedicated to the arts of the university. The theatre is located next to South Building on East Cameron Avenue on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [11]
The Paul Green Theatre was completed in 1976. It seats 500. Located in the Center for Dramatic Arts on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this building is the primary venue of PlayMakers Repertory Company. The Paul Green Theatre stages plays by professional actors, directors, and artists from across the nation. [12]
The Elizabeth Price Kenan Theatre was built in 1999 as an extension to the Paul Green Theatre. The Kenan Theatre seats between 120 and 265 depending on stage configuration and is considered a Black box theatre. It features the productions of PlayMakers Repertory Company's second stage series, PRC². It presents plays about controversial social and political issues. [2]
The venue also hosts productions by undergraduates from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [13]
Directors Vivienne Benesch, Desdemona Chiang, Wendy C. Goldberg and Joseph Haj have worked at PlayMakers, as well as the actor Ray Dooley
Dramatic and performing arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange and Durham County, North Carolina, United States. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-most populous municipality in the state. Chapel Hill and Durham make up the Durham-Chapel Hill, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 608,879 in 2023. When it's combined with Raleigh, the state capital, they make up the corners of the Research Triangle, which had an estimated population of 2,368,947 in 2023.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolling students in 1795, making it one of the oldest public universities in the United States.
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was an American writer. The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction states that "Wolfe was a major American novelist of the first half of the twentieth century, whose longterm reputation rests largely on the impact of his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and on the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life." Along with William Faulkner, he is considered one of the two most important authors of the Southern Renaissance within the American literary canon. He remains an important writer in modern American literature, as one of the first masters of autobiographical fiction, and is considered among North Carolina's most famous writers.
Paul Eliot Green 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.
Ray Dooley is a company member at the PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and has performed on Broadway, film and television. He is currently the head of the Professional Actor Training Program (PATP) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) and is a drama faculty member.
David Hammond is an American director and acting teacher. He trained for the theatre at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and received his M.F.A. from the Carnegie Mellon University Drama Department. He did his undergraduate studies at Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude with a concentration in Elizabethan literature. He taught at the Juilliard School, the American Conservatory Theater, and the Yale School of Drama and later became the artistic director of the PlayMakers Repertory Company.
The Lost Colony is an historical outdoor drama, written by American Paul Green and produced since 1937 in Manteo, North Carolina. It is based on accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts in the 16th century to establish a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island, then part of the Colony of Virginia. The play has been performed in an outdoor amphitheater located on the site of the original Roanoke Colony in the Outer Banks. More than four million people have seen it since 1937. It received a special Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre award in 2013.
Herbert Holden Thorp is an American chemist, professor and entrepreneur. He is a professor of chemistry at George Washington University. He was the tenth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assuming the position on July 1, 2008, succeeding James Moeser, and, at age 43, was noted as being among the youngest leaders of a university in the United States. At the time of his selection as chancellor, Thorp was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a Kenan Professor of chemistry at the university. Thorp is a 1986 graduate of UNC; he later earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology, and was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University.
The Playmakers Theatre, originally Smith Hall, is a historic academic building on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Built in 1850, it was designated a National Historic Landmark for its architecture, as an important example of Greek Revival architecture by Alexander Jackson Davis. It is now a secondary venue of the performing company, which is principally located at the Paul Green Theatre in the Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art.
Sturgis Elleno Leavitt (1888–1976) was the Kenan Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina, the author of many books on Spanish language and literature, the president of several Spanish language teaching organizations, an adviser to the U.S. State Department and for many years the chairman of the Southern Humanities Conference as well as editor of the Hispanic Review.
The outdoor drama, also known as the symphonic outdoor drama or symphonic drama, is a kind of historical play, often featuring music and dance, staged in outdoor amphitheaters in the location it depicts.
Chapel Hill Museum was a local cultural and historical museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The museum was founded in 1996 by leaders of the Town of Chapel Hill's Bicentennial Committee and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2006. In the decade since its founding, Chapel Hill Museum averaged over 20,000 visitors a year and provided education programs to over 3,500 local students a year. The museum closed on July 11, 2010.
Edward Louis Grady was an American stage, film and television actor and teacher.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Music Library contains a collection of approximately 3,500 19th century vocal and instrumental titles of American popular music. The collection has been digitally scanned and tagged for simple browsing.
Playmaker or playmakers may refer to:
Mary Bayard Morgan Wootten (1875–1959) was an American photographer. She named Pepsi Cola and created its logo for her neighbor Caleb Bradham, who invented the drink. Wootten was the first woman in the National Guard. She opened six photographic studios,and raised two children after her husband left her for the Gold rush. The Wootten-Moulton museum will be opening in New Bern North Carolina soon in an historic home on East Front Street by Anthony Lilly and Ashley Norman. https://nyti.ms/2FrDvgB
Joseph Haj is an American artistic director and actor who is the eighth artistic director of the Guthrie Theater. Before joining the Guthrie, he worked at PlayMakers Repertory Company.
Margaret Bland was an American playwright and poet who participated in the Playmakers Folk Drama movement at the University of North Carolina in the early part of the twentieth century. The UNC program, which produced such prominent writers as Paul Green and Thomas Wolfe, was an influential component of the wider Little Theatre Movement at the time.
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