Paul Green was a white dramatist, writer, and professor who was born in rural Harnett County, North Carolina, in 1894. As a child, Green worked on his family’s farm and immersed himself in literature and music. To save money to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he for a time worked as a teacher and played semi-professional baseball.
Green enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1916, but his education was interrupted by his enlistment in the Army in 1917; he served in France and Belgium in World War I. He returned to the university in 1919, where he studied drama and wrote plays as a member of the Carolina PlayMakers, and received a degree in philosophy in 1921. Green undertook graduate study at UNC-Chapel Hill and at Cornell University before becoming a professor of philosophy and dramatic art at UNC-Chapel Hill. During his time as a professor, Green also wrote plays, short stories, novels, and poetry. Many of his plays were produced by the PlayMakers, as well as in New York and Washington, DC. He retired from academia in 1944 to devote his time more fully to writing.
Green’s best known works are the play In Abraham’s Bosom, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927, and the symphonic drama The Lost Colony, based on the lost colony of Roanoke. The symphonic drama, a new theatrical form developed by Green, is performed outdoors, depicting historical events in the actual location where those events occurred, and combines additional dramatic elements such as music, dance, and pantomime. These two works and others brought Green wide acclaim, success, and recognition. Among numerous other accolades and awards, he was posthumously inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 1996.
Throughout his life, Green was strongly influenced by his childhood in a rural community and his experiences as a soldier during WWI. In addition to his educational and literary contributions, Green is also noted for his lifelong advocacy of issues related to social justice and human rights, including civil rights, prison reform, and abolition of the death penalty.
Green passed away in 1981. The Paul Green Theatre on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, the current home of the PlayMakers Repertory Company (the successor to the Carolina PlayMakers), is named after him.