Friday from the Archives: “Paul Green: A Professor of the Practice of Playwriting” an essay by Georgann Eubanks from NCLR 31 (2022)
We can’t wait to welcome everyone to ECU tomorrow for the GreenFest: A Double Feature Featuring NC Playwright Paul Green!
“If someone were to map the “family tree” of North Carolina writers,” writes Eubanks, “connecting the lines of writer-to-writer mentorship, the many tiers of “begats” would be complex. Scores of creative writing teachers
have nurtured successive generations of novelists, poets, playwrights, journalists, and producers of short stories and creative nonfiction.” Sharing that family tree is largely why NCLR exists and is also a large part of the work of many of the incredible literary organizations throughout the state, including the North Carolina Writers Network and the North Carolina Poetry Society.
Eubanks continues: “The practice of support, encouragement, and apprenticeship among North Carolina writers began more than a century ago. Present-day students may not be as familiar with the generous ethos set by Paul Green at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Green, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1927, only six years after earning his bachelor’s degree from UNC, had been profoundly encouraged by instructors who saw his talent immediately. He, in turn, passed the gift along to his students and many professional colleagues over his lifetime.”
Eubanks lists some of the other professional colleagues Green assisted. “Those who gathered to share their works in progress over the years included [John] Ehle, the novelist Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn); the Mexican American playwright and novelist Josefina Niggli (Mexican Village), who joined the Playmakers and earned her master’s degree at UNC in 1938; novelist and journalist James Street (The Biscuit Eater); playwright and journalist Noel Houston (According to Law); and the extremely prolific, multi-genre
writer Manly Wade Wellman. Sometimes the poet and UNC-Greensboro professor Randall Jarrell would drive over to Chapel Hill for a meeting. For a brief time, folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), who settled briefly in Durham to establish a drama program at the North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) enthralled the gathering with her play-in-progress called john Io De Conqueror. She maintained contact with Green after she left North Carolina.” [Editor’s Note: scholarly pieces on all of these writers would be most welcome additions to NCLR.]
The idea of GreenFest was to take a closer look at one of the many gifts: from the new documentary “The Playmaker” about Paul Green’s life of work to the creative retelling of a moment of Green’s life in “The Problem of the Hero,” Ebzb Productions’ award-winning movie about the real-life collaboration, friendship, and subsequent dissolution between Paul Green and famed novelist Richard Wright. There is always more to discover learning where these gifts have led.
Read the entire essay on ProQuest or purchase a copy of the 2022 issue.
