The Carolina PlayMakers were founded in 1918 by Frederick H. Koch, a white professor of dramatic literature and playwriting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Koch established the group as a means through which his students could experience their written work performed. Koch and the drama program attracted numerous playwrights, novelists, short-story writers, and performers to UNC-Chapel Hill, among them Paul Green, Kay Kyser, Betty Smith, and Thomas Wolfe. Koch called the work of the PlayMakers “folk plays,” meaning that these works focused on and depicted aspects of everyday life of ordinary North Carolinians. Koch remained active with the PlayMakers until his death in 1944.
The PlayMakers’ original home on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus was in Smith Hall, which was later renamed as the PlayMakers Theatre. The building was designed by architect Alexander J. Davis in the Greek Revival style and built by John Berry and Henry Richards Sr. It was completed in 1852, and is considered a significant architectural work on the campus; it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974. The building was originally named for Benjamin Smith, one of the first UNC-Chapel Hill trustees, who had been deceased for a number of years by the time the building was completed and named. A wealthy white man, Smith was the first donor to the university in 1789 and was recorded as owning the largest number of enslaved people in North Carolina at that time.
The successor to the Carolina PlayMakers is the PlayMakers Repertory Company, which holds its performances primarily at the Paul Green Theatre in the Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.