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The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press

Frederick Koch’s folk-play company of 1918 and the university press of 1922, the two institutions that made Chapel Hill a literary place.

In briefFrederick 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.

100 indexed works are connected with this event.

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Playmakers Theatre, Chapel Hill
Playmakers Theatre, Chapel Hill

Indexed works

Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.

Narrow these works. Each link opens the search already limited to this event. Counts are indexed works, not copies on a shelf; a work can carry more than one period or place.

Material

Histories 19Bibliographies 17Periodicals 13Photographs & portraits 13Drama 7other types 16

Period

20th century 30World War I era 2World War II era 1

Place

Chapel Hill 44North Carolina (statewide) 33Orange County 19Carrboro 1

William Terry Couch and the Politics of Academic Publishing

Shiflett, Orvin Lee · 2015 · McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Orvin Lee Shiflett's biography of William Terry Couch, 1901 to 1988, the editor who built up UNC Press at Chapel Hill over four decades in publishing, with a subtitle that calls his career a lightning rod for controversy. Chapters treat culture in the South, a case history in book publishing, objectivity and social science and 'The Sainted Book Burners'. It bears on scholarly publishing and university presses in the twentieth century. McFarland, 2015, 268 pages with illustrations.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NCCU record: University of North Carolina Press -- History -- 20th century.

NCCU UNC Library of Congress

Frederick Henry Koch

Selden, Samuel ; Sphangos, Mary Tom · 1954 · University of North Carolina Library

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.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Carolina Playmakers.

Reviewed in Educational Theatre Journal (1956).

Duke NC Cardinal Durham Library of Congress

Pioneering a people's theatre

Henderson, Archibald · 1945 · University of N.C. Press

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.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Carolina Playmakers.

NC Cardinal Durham

The Carolina Playmakers

Spearman, Walter · 1970 · University of North Carolina Press

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.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Chapel Hill PL record: Carolina Playmakers.

Duke NC Cardinal Chapel Hill PL Durham Library of Congress

Carolina Folk Plays

Koch, Frederick H. · 1922

The second series of one-act plays from the Carolina Playmakers, the UNC theater company Frederick Koch founded in 1918, published in 1922. Includes Thomas Wolfe's 'The Return of Buck Gavin', 'Fixin's' by Paul and Erma Green, and plays by Elizabeth Lay, Lucy Cobb and Frances Gray, with appendices listing Playmakers productions.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Carolina Playmakers.

Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham NCCU UNC UNCSA CH Historical Society Library of Congress

A model for folk theatre : the Carolina Playmakers

Moore, Cecelia · 2014 · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Carolina Playmakers.

UNC
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The University of North Carolina Press dedication of Aubrey Lee Brooks Hall, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 24 November 1980.

1980 · University of North Carolina Press?

Folded program for the University of North Carolina Press dedication of Aubrey Lee Brooks Hall at Chapel Hill on 24 November 1980. One sheet printed as three unnumbered pages, naming the building and the occasion.

Why this is here: Its title names this subject.

UNC

The Carolina play-book of the Carolina Playmakers and the Carolina Dramatic Association : commemorative issue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Carolina Dramatic Association

1973

Commemorative issue of the Carolina play-book, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Carolina Dramatic Association in 1973. The play-book was the magazine of the Carolina Playmakers at Chapel Hill and had ceased publication in 1944, so this special edition brought the title back for the occasion. Topics include theater in North Carolina along with both organizations.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Carolina Playmakers.

UNC

50th anniversary, Carolina Playmakers, Playmakers Theater : forum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, March 29, 1969

1969

Transcript of the forum held on March 29, 1969 at Playmakers Theater for the fiftieth anniversary of the Carolina Playmakers, the theatre company of the University of North Carolina. Reported by Elizabeth Overby across 52 leaves. The proceedings cover the company's first half century and the Chapel Hill building it performed in.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Carolina Playmakers.

UNC

Spotlight on playmaking at the University of North Carolina

1963

Short article on the Carolina Playmakers, the university drama group, reprinted from Players magazine for February 1963, pages 140 to 143. Topics include theater at Chapel Hill and the Playmakers themselves, so the piece is a period account of playmaking on the campus at the start of the 1960s.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Carolina Playmakers.

UNC

Toward an American folk drama : twenty-fifth anniversary, the Carolina Playmakers : The Carolina play-book, commemorative issue II

1944 · University of North Carolina

A commemorative number of the Carolina Play-Book marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Carolina Playmakers, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1944. The second of the anniversary issues, it gathers material on the company's folk drama work. Its subjects are the Playmakers and theater in Chapel Hill.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Carolina Playmakers.

UNC

Twenty-five years at Chapel Hill

Koch, Frederick H. (Frederick Henry), 1877-1944 · 1944 · National Theatre Conference

Frederick H. Koch looks back on twenty-five years of the Carolina Playmakers, the folk drama company he founded at the University of North Carolina. Detached from the June 1944 Bulletin of the National Theatre Conference and printed in Cleveland, it concerns theater in Chapel Hill and Koch himself, who died in the same year the piece appeared.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Carolina Playmakers.

UNC

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In the chronology

Dated events connected with this event: sixteen of 46, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 46 dated events in the chronology →

Earliest first. Scroll sideways, or use the arrows.

16 dated events

  1. The University Dramatic Club stages a student show

    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill

    On May 1, 1907, the University Dramatic Club acted a student-written show with a mock sermon and a burlesque faculty meeting. L. W. Parker was the club president.

  2. The Carolina Playmakers are organized

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    Frederick H. Koch organized the Carolina Playmakers at UNC.

    People: Frederick H. Koch

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers

  3. The university's extension bureau starts a Bureau of Community Drama under Koch

    Founding or opening · Bureau of Extension, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

    The university's Bureau of Extension added Koch in 1918 to run a community drama division, which lent plays and gave free advice to schools and towns across the state. Requests grew from 40 playbooks in 1919-20 to 2,150 in 1924-25.

    People: Frederick H. Koch

  4. The Playmakers turn the new public school auditorium into their first stage

    Construction or physical change · Public school auditorium (the Play-House), Chapel Hill

    With no stage on campus, Koch got the village officials' leave to use the auditorium of a newly finished public school a few blocks away. Volunteers built out the stage and a proscenium, and the room, called the Play-House, served the Playmakers for seven years until Smith Hall opened.

    People: Frederick H. Koch

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers

  5. The Playmakers give the first Forest Theatre production, The Taming of the Shrew

    Publication, speech or performance · Forest Theatre, Battle Park, Chapel Hill

    The first play staged in the Forest Theatre was Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, on July 31, 1919. It began a run of outdoor Shakespeare there each summer through the early 1920s.

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers · Battle Park · Forest Theatre

  6. The University of North Carolina Press is founded

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    On June 12, 1922, university librarian Louis Round Wilson, nine other faculty members and three trustees founded the University of North Carolina Press, the first university press in the South. Its first book, William C. Coker's study of water molds, appeared in 1923, and William T. Couch became director in 1932.

    People: William T. Couch · Louis Round Wilson

  7. Bayard Wootten photographs the Playmakers' outdoor Taming of the Shrew

    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill

    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

  8. The Carolina Dramatic Association begins district contests with state finals in Chapel Hill

    Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill

    Beginning in the spring of 1925, drama groups from around the state competed in district festivals for a place in finals staged in Chapel Hill, with exhibits and visiting speakers from the national theatre. The association's first festival, a smaller program of school plays and dances in Memorial Hall, had been held in April 1924.

  9. Paul Green wins the Pulitzer Prize for In Abraham’s Bosom

    Award or honor · Chapel Hill

    Paul Green received the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for In Abraham’s Bosom.

    People: Paul Green

  10. Samuel Selden joins the Carolina Playmakers as technical director

    Appointment, election or service · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

    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.

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers

  11. A regional conference on the drama meets in the Playmakers Theatre

    Publication, speech or performance · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre), Cameron Avenue, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    Drama critics, producers and teachers met at the Playmakers Theatre on April 4 and 5, 1928 for what the Tar Heel called the first Eastern Regional Conference on the Drama, held as its Southern division; the state's own drama festival followed on April 6 and 7. Henderson's book counts it as one of two Chapel Hill drama meetings of more than state importance.

    Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

  12. Harry Davis organizes the Junior Carolina Playmakers, a children's theatre

    Founding or opening · Carolina Playmakers, Chapel Hill

    Harry E. Davis, the Playmakers' technical director, started the Junior Carolina Playmakers in 1933 to give plays for child audiences, including two he wrote himself.

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers

  13. Betty Smith comes to Chapel Hill with the Federal Theatre Project

    Life event · Chapel Hill

    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

  14. UNC Press publishes Odum's Southern Regions of the United States

    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill

    The University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill published Odum's Southern Regions of the United States, a 664-page study of social conditions across the South prepared for the Social Science Research Council's Southern Regional Committee.

  15. Earl Wynn starts radio production for the Playmakers

    Founding or opening · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

    In the fall of 1939 the Playmakers began radio work under Earl Wynn, and their 'Carolina Playmakers of the Air' grew from local programs to a national network series. A campus radio studio was set up in 1940.

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers

  16. The Playmakers present the 100th program in their experimental series of new plays

    Statistic or record · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre), Cameron Avenue, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    On December 12, 1944 the Playmakers gave the 100th program in their Experimental Series, the evenings where student plays were staged and the audience then talked back to the author.

    Subject: Carolina Playmakers · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

Places in this history

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 5 with a known location.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

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Research sources

Resources picked for this event, each with a note on what it holds.

Background 10

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Historic sites, markers, and maps

Records of the time

Collections and databases 7

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Picture: Playmakers Theatre, Chapel Hill. CC BY-SA 3.0. Photograph by Wgreaves; via Wikimedia Commons

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