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13 dated events and 1 storyline match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–14.Back to highlights
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press
Frederick Koch's Carolina Playmakers, organized in 1918, and the University of North Carolina Press, founded in 1922, made Chapel Hill a place where plays and books were made as well as read.
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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The Carolina Playmakers are organized
Frederick H. Koch organized the Carolina Playmakers at UNC.
Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events
People: Frederick H. Koch
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Frederick H. Koch is hired as professor of dramatic literature
Recruited by Edwin Greenlaw from the University of North Dakota, where he had founded the Dakota Playmakers, Frederick Henry Koch signed in late May 1918 at $2,500 a year to teach dramatic literature, a title he chose. He arrived that summer meaning to build a folk drama program in North Carolina.
People: Frederick H. Koch · Edwin Greenlaw · Edward Kidder Graham
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Carolina Playmakers present their first bill
The first bill included Thomas Wolfe’s The Return of Buck Gavin, with Wolfe in the title role.
People: Thomas Wolfe
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Bayard Wootten photographs the Playmakers' outdoor Taming of the Shrew
Bayard Wootten of New Bern came to Chapel Hill to photograph the Carolina Playmakers' outdoor production of The Taming of the Shrew, the start of years of Playmakers work. That month she also urged the University to have aerial photographs made of the growing campus.
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Playmakers Theatre opens
The Carolina Playmakers dedicated their theatre in the remodeled Smith Hall, the 1850s building later used as a library and law school, on Monday, November 23, 1925, with talks by Frederick Koch and President Harry W. Chase and three new folk plays.
Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events
People: Frederick H. Koch
Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre) · Carolina Playmakers
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Samuel Selden joins the Carolina Playmakers as technical director
After five years in New York theater, including the Provincetown Playhouse, Selden came to the University of North Carolina in 1927 as technical director of the Carolina Playmakers.
Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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The Carolina Playmakers stage a Shaw-Henderson Festival
The Carolina Playmakers held a Shaw-Henderson Festival in Chapel Hill honoring Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw's authorized biographer. It featured Shaw's You Never Can Tell, the play whose 1903 amateur performance had first drawn Henderson to Shaw.
Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Betty Smith comes to Chapel Hill with the Federal Theatre Project
The Federal Theater sent Smith to Chapel Hill in 1936 to work with Frederick H. Koch of the Carolina Playmakers. She stayed when the federal project expired, helped Koch compile American Folk Plays and took his classes for him in his absence.
People: Frederick H. Koch
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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The Lost Colony premieres
Paul Green's pageant-drama The Lost Colony opened on Roanoke Island on Sunday evening, July 4, 1937, and the Chapel Hill Weekly reported that it scored a hit. The production had Chapel Hill roots: Frederick Koch's Carolina Playmakers were involved, and at least one actor came to Chapel Hill in June to rehearse.
Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events
People: Paul Green
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Frederick Koch dies and is buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Koch, who taught dramatic literature and playwriting at UNC for twenty-six years and organized the Carolina Playmakers, died on August 16, 1944 and was buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery. Samuel Selden succeeded him as chair of the Department of Dramatic Art and director of the Playmakers.
People: Samuel Selden
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Carolina Playmakers
- Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Andy Griffith plays his first role, in The Gondoliers at Memorial Hall
Andy Griffith, who had arrived at Carolina in July 1944, auditioned on a whim and made his stage debut in a Carolina Playmakers production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers at Memorial Hall.
Subject: Memorial Hall · Carolina Playmakers
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Samuel Selden leaves the Playmakers and Harry E. Davis takes over the Department of Dramatic Art
Selden left Chapel Hill in 1959 to chair the Department of Theatre Arts at UCLA, and Harry E. Davis became chairman of the Department of Dramatic Art.
Subject: Carolina Playmakers
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Lillian Hughes Prince leaves funds to the Carolina Playmakers
Lillian Hughes Prince, who had acted in thirty or more Playmakers productions, left considerable funds to the Carolina Playmakers in her will. She died in New York and was buried in Chapel Hill Cemetery.
Subject: Carolina Playmakers · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
