Storyline · 1929–1933
Alongside the Carolina Playmakers, faculty families, Hillsboro residents and Chapel Hill children formed their own theatre groups between 1929 and 1933. About 1929 drama professor Preston Farrar built a house on Laurel Hill Road with indoor and outdoor stages, and in November 1931 a community dramatic club, mostly faculty members and their wives, formed there, planning to read a modern play each month. In January 1932 a play-producing group for Hillsboro was launched in Clem Strudwick's studio, with Frederick H. Koch and Irene Fussler advising. That April Harry E. Davis, the Playmakers' technical director, staged his own Cinderella with about 35 children, and the cast organized as the Junior Playmakers, who gave plays for child audiences into 1933.
About 1929 Preston Farrar, a drama professor at the university, built a two-story stucco house on Laurel Hill Road in the manner of an English cottage. It had indoor and outdoor stages for rehearsals and small productions, including a stone terrace used as a theatre, and a specimen garden. On November 7, 1931 a community dramatic club, mostly faculty members and their wives, was formed at the home of Dr. P. C. Farrar, whose house had a little theatre. It planned to meet monthly to read a modern play and elected Farrar chairman and Whitner Bissell secretary and treasurer. In late January 1932 a play-producing organization for Hillsboro was launched at a meeting in Clem Strudwick's studio, with Frederick H. Koch and Irene Fussler of Chapel Hill advising, and a larger meeting followed the next week. Its name, perhaps the Hillsboro Little Theatre, had not yet been chosen. On April 8 and 9, 1932 Harry E. Davis, the Playmakers' technical director, staged his own dramatization of Cinderella with about 35 Chapel Hill children. On April 12 the cast met at the Forest Theatre and organized as the Junior Playmakers, with membership in the Carolina Playmakers. The group gave plays for child audiences, including Davis's Cinderella and his Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, given in the spring of 1933.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
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No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Walter Spearman's account of the Carolina Playmakers, the theater company at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, across its first fifty years, as the subtitle puts it. The company was founded in 1918 under Frederick H. Koch. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1970, 178 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Brief biography of Frederick Henry Koch (1877-1944), founder of the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina, by Samuel Selden and Mary Tom Sphangos, with notes by Jonathan Daniels and others. It reprints Koch's own essay 'Folk playmaking' on pages 59 to 68. Published by the University of North Carolina Library in 1954, viii and 92 pages with illustrations and a portrait.
Reviewed in Educational Theatre Journal (1956).
Archibald Henderson's short history of the Carolina Playmakers, the University of North Carolina's theater company at Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 104 pages. Written while the company was still in its first decades, it gives a contemporary view of how the Playmakers saw their own mission as a people's theatre.
Cecelia Moore on the Carolina Playmakers, the folk drama company Frederick H. Koch built at the University of North Carolina. The text is the talk she gave on April 8, 2014 in Wilson Library for the Gladys Hall Coates university history lecture series, printed by the university. Topics include the Playmakers, Koch and theatrical companies in Chapel Hill.
Fifty-year history of PlayMakers Repertory Company, the professional theater founded in 1975 by Tom Haas with Arthur Housman on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. Chapters by Bobbi Owen, Cecelia Moore and Gregory Kable follow the company leader by leader: Haas, David Rotenberg and Gregory Boyd, Milly S. Barranger and David Hammond, Joseph Haj and Vivienne Benesch. Appendices list productions, Department of Dramatic Art faculty, MFA graduates and administrators since 1975. Published by the department in 2021, 168 pages, online edition.
John Cook's history of Merge Records, the independent label that Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk built in Chapel Hill. Chapters follow the label year by year from 1987 to 2009 and pause for profiles of Butterglory, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Lambchop and the Arcade Fire, ending on how it managed to stay small. Advance reading copy of the first edition, published in Chapel Hill in 2009, 289 pages with twelve pages of plates.
David Menconi's history of popular music in North Carolina, from the working-class roots of the state's traditions to the Chapel Hill and Carrboro rock scene of recent decades. Menconi, who covered music for the Raleigh News and Observer for nearly thirty years, builds the book on interviews and reporting, and Black musicians' contributions run through it. First issued in print by UNC Press in 2020; this is the online edition, 329 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2022).
A handbook to the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, published by the museum in 1983 for its twenty-fifth anniversary. It combines a catalog of the collection with a history of the museum, which opened in 1958. Includes a bibliography on pages xviii to xx. 170 pages with illustrations, 22 cm.
Memoir of Woody Durham, who called University of North Carolina football and basketball on the radio from 1971 until he retired in 2011, written with Adam Lucas. Four decades of Tar Heel games as heard from the broadcast booth. Subjects include radio broadcasters and sportscasters, North Carolina, biography.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Gay Mahaffy Hertzman's 1971 catalogue of the collection of the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center, the university art museum in Chapel Hill now called the Ackland Art Museum, printed by Herzig Somerville. William Hayes Ackland (1855 to 1940) left the bequest that founded the museum.
Exhibit publication from the Orange County Historical Museum for its special exhibit on working life, shown in Hillsborough from March to December 2024 and concerned with the county's trades and industrial arts. Produced by the museum in 2024, it documents Orange County and Hillsborough history through the work people did.
Jennifer E. Miller's account of the Hillsborough Artists Cooperative and its Skylight Gallery across their first thirty years, 1990 to 2020. Topics include art in Hillsborough for that period and the history of both the cooperative and the gallery. Published in 2021, it records a local institution in the town's art scene that would otherwise leave little written trace.
Cecelia Moore's 2017 study of the Federal Theatre Project in the southern states, with the Carolina Playmakers at Chapel Hill among its subjects. Topics include theatre in North Carolina in the twentieth century and the relation of theatre to society.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Amateur theatre outside the Playmakers, 1929–1933.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/amateur-theatre-storyline-1929/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
