Playmakers Celebrating 50th Anniversary
By SAMUEL SELDEN
In the beginning days of
America, the principal
questions that preoccupied the
minds of thoughtful people in
our young country were two:
how to conquer the savage
wilderness and how to build
among men and women from
many different backgrounds a
working democratic society.
There was Very small room in
virile citizens'thinking then for
anything as "fancy" as the arts.
An inclination to be more than
just casually interested in
music, painting, dancing, or
especially "playacting," was
regarded as effete: for a man to
put his heart into one of the
esthetic activities was an
unfortunate sign of
weakness a kind of
acknowledgment that he
lacked the vigor or the skill to
wield an axe or to wrestle with
the law. So, for many people
of that period the world of the
arts was viewed as a world to
be avoided.
A typical attitude of the
late 1700's was that expressed
in the diary of a young
Bostonian, Josiah Quincy, Jr.,
who had just gone to see a play
in New York: "I was . . on
the whole much gratified, and
believed that if I had stayed in
town a month I should go to
the theatre every night. But as
a citizen and friend to the
morals and happiness of
society, I should strive hard
against the admission, and
much more the establishment
of a playhouse in any state of
which I was a member."
Educators of the time agreed
with Mr. Quincy. President
Timothy Dwight of Yale
declared that the stage was "an
evil so great, contagious, and
extended" that it "ought to get
universal opposition in its
progress."
A few years later in the
South, General William
Richardson Davie, leading
trustee of the new University
of North Carolina, wrote to his
friend James Hoag: "As to
acting plays at the University, I
think they are by no means as
well calculated for
improvement in elocution as
single speeches, and I believe
this will be found to be the
result of experience of every
me continent . . . . n uie
faculty insist up6WtR0kind tf
exhibition, the trustees must
interfere. Our object is to make
the students men, not players."
It would be interesting to
know what kind of shock
would have affected the
General's mind if he had been
informed that about a hundred
and fifty years later some of
the most virile of the athletes
at Carolina would be taking
regularly accredited courses in
playmaking, and going on to
careers in acting, and that the
Governor of the state would
publicly recognize that summer
shows, in larger part initiated,
planned and directed from the
University, were providing to
visitors from out of state one
of the most profitable and
worthwhile attractions to this
. area!
Between the letter-writing
of General Davie and the close
of the First World War the
public attitude toward the
theatre in the South had
undergone changes. What
stimulated a most forceful
interest was the addition to the
faculty of the University of
North Carolina in 1918 of a
little man in a Norfolk jacket,
with a pipe, a dog, and an
infectious smile. He was
Frederick Koch, soon to be
called affectionately bv his
student simply "Proff." When
he talked his eyes sparkled. He
was crazy about theatre. There
was no question in his mind
about the legitimacy of its
being developed on a university
campus!
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extraordinarily
"Proff" had
organized a playwriting
class the first one was made
up of several girls and Tom
Wolfe and established a band
of actors and technicians who
adopted the name of "The
Carolina Playmakers." The
Playmakers produced the
tragedies and the comedies
written by the playwrights.
From time to time the group
trouped their literary products
through the state, then through
neighboring states, then to
such far away places as
Massachusetts, New York,
Florida, Texas and Missouri.
The audiences were delighted.
So Professor Koch's work
grew.
Since friends in the towns and
cities of North Carolina
showed so much interest.
"Proff" and the University's
Extension Division established
a Bureau of
Drama, and
Community
school and
community groups, stimulated
by the "playmakers' staff. The
Association, under the present
secretaryship of Professor John
W. Parker, is still very much
alive. It holds an annual State
Drama Festival at the
University, sponsored by the
Carolina Playmakers and the
Carolina Dramatic Association.
In 45 years the Association has
held 45 state and 344 district
festivals in North Carolina;
1,493 play productions have
till then embraced by the
English Department, was set up
in an independent Department
of Dramatic Art The Carolina
Playmakers was its laboratory
and producing arm. Staff
members were added,
specialists in Playwriting,
Acting, Directing, Scenery
Design, Construction and
Painting, Costuming and
Business Asministration, as
well as Dramatic History and
Literature, and a whole new
program of graduate studies
was added. More students
enrolled. When Professor Koch
died in 1944 Samuel Selden
Nurses in reserve
Within an
brief time,
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strength ih reseHe.
THE U. S. ARMY RESERVE
Virginia International Raceway
i announces
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP SPORTS CAR RACES
September 28, 29, 1968
Danville, Virginia
Advance Tickets
V2 price only $5.00
all privileges for entire weekend
Write: VI R
Box 457
Danville, Virginia 24541
or
Call: Larry Sykes 942-3360
Robin Wright 929-1462
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Only enough for half the
STUDENT
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took over the chairmanship of
the Department
As an increasing number of
men and women came to
been given, with an estimated
attendance of 220,000 people,
of whom 71,000 were
participants (playwrights,
actors, directors and
technicians.)
The early spirit of the
Carolina Playmakers a spirit
which has continued to infect
the group through the
years was stated by Mr. Koch:
44 From the first we have
thought of our Playmakers as a
fellowship of young people
working happily together
toward a single ideal the
making of a communal, a
people's theatre in America."
The organization is governed
by no rules. The emphasis
always has been on creation
and experiment The plays
students have written and
produced have been of every
kind tragedies, comedies,
satires, farces, realistic and
fantastic works, plays with and
without music, short and long.
Besides the original pieces, the
Playmakers have staged
standard works, both classical
and modern, in addition to
many studio exercises from
every period of theatre history.
Professor Koch's first
handful of writers and
producers was very small a
kind of family gathering. It was
so small that a wedding, and
the arrival of a first child was
regarded as a family event It
became a tradition for the first
baby born to a Playmaker
couple to receive a silver
spoon. Very soon the tribe had
increased so greatly, and the
crop of new babies had become
so numerous that the practice
had to be abandoned. The
jeweler could not keep up with
the orders for spoons.
Beginning as a small activity
in a little room of the old
University Library, the creative
efforts of "Proff" Koch's
students grew until they
became a major enterprise. In
1936 the dramatic curriculum,
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LIMITED QUANTITY!
Students on this campus!
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Chapel Hill from all over the
country, the influence of the
Department and the
Playmakers spread widely.
There are now more than
6,000 alumni. If former
students return to Chapel Hill
for a reunion planned for next
Spring, from all the areas of
the world in which they now
live, they will be coming from
nearly every state of our
country including Alaska and
Hawaii, and from England,
Germany, Japany, Norway,
Denmark, China, the
Philippines, Canada, Mexico
and Chile.
Among those artists and
administrators actors, authors
and others who got their start
here, will be Shepperd
Strudwkk, stage and motion
picture star; Douglas Watson,
stage and television veteran;
Andy Griffith, television
celebrity; Kay Kyser, retired
now; R.G. Armstrong,
Broadway
actor; Sam
and Hollywood
Greene, singing
leading man; Whitner Bissell,
T.V. regular; Eugenia Rawls,
New York actress; Jim
Pritchett. television star; and
Robert Dale Martin, casting
director of New York C.B.S.
television; and among the
playwrights will be Paul Green,
Pulitzer Prize winner; Dick
Adler, collaborator on "The
Pajama Game" and "Damn
Yankees'; Kermit Hunter,
writer of outdoor dramas;
Josefina Niggli, fiction writer
as well as dramatist, Gwen
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Pharis Ringwood, Howard
Richardson, Arnold Schulman
and others. A number of those
who once studied playwriting
at Chapel Hill have become
novelists and critics, and we
hope to see them at the
reunion such people as Betty
Smith, Frances Gray Patton,
Daphne Athos, William Hardy,
John Ehle, Bemice Kelly
Harris, LeGette Blythe,
Jonathan Daniels, Sam Hirsch,
Brock Brower and Max Steele.
Among others who should
come are Walter Terry, dance
critic; Paul Nichell, director;
Nananne Pore her, lighting
authority, and many others.
One of the areas into which
the work of The Carolina
Playmakers has shown the
greatest expansion through the
years is that of the outdoor
historical play. Called both
"epic" and "symphonic," it is
produced annually through
fifty to sixty performances in a
big amphitheatre designed
especially for it Although it
makes extensive use of - such
pageantic elements as singing,
dancing and colorful crowds, it
is strictly a play in the fact that
it employs a plot and centers
its story on one or two
principal characters.
Paul Green started the series
of symphonic dramas with
'The Lost Colony" on
Roanoke Island in 1937. It was
written for a celebration of the
350th Anniversary of the
coming to this continent of the
first English band of settlers in
0) ID)
Blue Cross and Blue Shield health protection is now
available to you at UNC on a family contract. And
at low group rates if you act by October 10.
An unexpected illness can often play havoc vith oven
the most generous student family budget. So dont
leave you rself unprotected d uring the1 months or years
ahead.
See your Blue Cross and Blue Shield representative at
registration. Or stop by the Dean of Men's Off ice in
room 02 of the South Building.
Remember, you must act by October 10 to get low
group rates.
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1587, and is still being
performed every summer.
Other historical plays, which
followed it were "The.
Common Glory" (about
Thomas Jefferson and the
Revolutionary War) by Mr.
Green at Williamsburg,
Virginia; "Unto These Hills"
(about the mountain Indians1
long struggle for citizenship)
by Kermit Hunter (at the time
of the writing a graduate
student at Carolina) at
Cherokee, North Carolina;
"Horn in the West" (about the
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pioneers) by Mr. Hunter at
Boone, North Carolina. These
were followed by other plays
by Paul Green and Kermit
Hunter, then dramas by other
authors in various parts of the
country. Most of them are still
running. With the exception of
"The Common Glory," the
early plays were directed by
members of the Playmakers
faculty Harry Davis, Kai
Jurgensen, Sam Selden. The
casts .and the designers,
costumers and technical
assistants for several of the
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shows are still drawn in large..
part from this University. :
Over the years more than;
4,000,000 spectators have
attended these outdoor plays.
The interest in the epic-
(symphonic) type of
production has become so
great that a permanent
full-time organization, the.-v
Institute of Outdoor Drama,
headed by Mark Sumner, has
been set up in Chapel Hill to
give advice to communities
desiring to stage similar works V
in their localities. 5
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