Paul E. Green (Paul Eliot Green) Biography

American dramatist, born in Lillington, North Carolina, educated at the University of North Carolina and Cornell University. He was a member of the Carolina Playmakers (which included Thomas Wolfe), a writing and producing group founded at the University of North Carolina in 1918 by Frederick Koch. They had their own theatre, but also toured extensively through the Southern states, providing an influential model for the little theatre movement in regional and folk drama. Green's exploration of character through regional setting made a significant contribution to American drama, as in his first full-length play, In Abraham's Bosom (1926; Pulitzer Prize), influenced by Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones. His work is marked by a commitment to the underprivileged and dispossessed, both black and poor white, in a series of plays from the mid-1920s, culminating in his stage version of Richard Wright's novel Native Son (1941). His full-length plays include Your Fiery Furnace (1923), The Field God (1927), Tread the Green Grass (1929), Roll, Sweet Chariot (1934), and The House of Connelly (1931). He collaborated with Kurt Weill on a musical, Johnny Johnson (1937), and wrote a series of historical pageants which are performed annually at the venues for which they were written.