Plays by Elizabeth Lay, Harold Williamson, Paul Green, Hubert Heffner, Dougald McMillan to Be Published, Oct. 18, 1921

Paul Green, Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright

To Publish Plays by Playmaker Authors. . . Henry Holt and Company to Publish Volume of Five Plays at an Early Date

That the Carolina Playmakers are coming more and more to be recognized as a national institution, and that the organization has a good commercial possibility, is shown by the fact that five of their one-act plays are to be published by Henry Holt & Co. of New York at absolutely no expense to the Playmakers.

The first volume of what Professor Koch hopes to be a large number is to be published very soon, and is to include five of the plays which have been introduced here as follows:

“When Witches Ride” by Elizabeth A. Lay of Beaufort, N.C.

“Peggy” by Harold Williamson of Carthage.

“The Last of the Lowries” by Paul Green of Lillington.

“Dod Gast Ye Both” by Hubert Heffner of Maiden.

“Off Nag’s Head” by Dougald McMillan of Wilmington.

The volume is to be copyrighted in the name of the Carolina Playmakers Inc., but royalties from the production of plays elsewhere are to be given to the authors. The royalty for the production of single play is to be $5.

The book will be illustrated with photos from the original productions. It will include the original cast of characters and an introduction by Professor Koch explaining the methods of the Carolina Playmakers. Professor Tom Pete Cross, formerly of the University of North Carolina, but now of the University of Chicago, will edit the dialect of the plays.

The volume will sell for $1.60 and all royalties from the sale of the book will go to the Carolina Playmakers, to be devoted towards the theatre building fund.

Henry Holt & Co. Is one of the largest publishing houses in the world. In explaining and complimenting the merits of the plays the publishers quote Walter Pritchard Eaton, the dramatic critic, in The Drama for July as follows:

“Frederick H. Koch of North Carolina is doing a wonderful work. He did it in North Dakota, and he has proved it can be done just as well in the Carolina Hills. He is teaching young people to write their own plays about their own people and lives, stage them, act them—and then take them right into the heart of those they are concerned with, and make the people listen to them and enjoy them. I would rejoice more over the one little play that is written and acted by the men and women in their own environment, before their own neighbors, provided it is well written and earnestly acted, than I would over the ninety and nine written by G.B. Shaw, Augustus Thomas, G.M. Cohan and William Shakespeare, and sent out from New York.”

These are the first of the Carolina Playmakers plays to be sold, but Professor Koch hopes to have other volumes to follow the first. The mere fact that Holt is publishing the plays under a contract as liberal as the one under which he is publishing these plays shows that there is a good commercial possibility in them.

From the front page of The Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, N.C., Oct. 18, 1921. To learn more about Frederick Koch and his work with Carolina Playmakers, see www.ncpedia.org/biography/koch-frederick-henry. Paul Green photo by Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c12304, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1265948. Green went on to write other historical dramas and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1927 play In Abraham’s Bosom. He also penned The Lost Colony, which has been produced since 1937 near Manteo, N.C.