Green, Paul

(1894-1981)

   Paul Eliot Green was born in Lillinton, North Carolina, and wrote many one-act plays beginning during his schooling at the University of North Carolina, where he studied with Frederick H. Koch, and at Cornell University. His one-act The No 'Count Boy (1925) exemplifies the many folk dramas he wrote. In 1926, Green's drama of racial conflict in the South, In Abraham's Bosom, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, although the play had already closed. Green's leftist politics, often evident in his plays, frequently focused on racial inequities. From the mid-1920s to World War II, he wrote several critically applauded works, including The Field God (1927), The House ofConnelly* (1931), Roll, Sweet Chariot (1934), Hymn to the Rising Sun (1936), the libretto and lyrics for the antiwar musical Johnny Johnson (1936; with music by Kurt Weill), and a collaboration with Richard Wright* on a stage adaptation of Wright's Native Son* (1941). In 1937, he wrote the first outdoor drama* (or symphonic drama), The Lost Colony, set on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Green also taught drama at the University of North Carolina.