North Carolina's Paul Green (1894-1981) was part of that remarkable generation of writers who first brought southern writing to the attention of the world. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1927, Green was a restless experimenter who pioneered a new form of theater with his "symphonic drama," The Lost Colony. A concern for human rights characterized both his life and his writing, and his steady advocacy for educational and social reform and racial justice contributed in fundamental ways to the emerging New South in the first half of this century.

A Paul Green...

From the 1920s through the 1950s Maxwell Anderson was one of the most important playwrights in America. His thirty-three produced plays make him a leader among these playwrights of America's most creative era in the theater, and a number of his plays have shown a lasting vitality and importance. What Price Glory (1924) dramatized the disillusionment and horror of World War I . With Elizabeth the Queen (1929), Winterset (1935), and High Tor (1936), Anderson revived poetic drama in the modern theater. His versatility as a playwright was further reflected in the...

In 1937, The Lost Colony, Paul Green's dramatic retelling of the founding and mysterious disappearance of the Roanoke Island colony, opened to standing-room-only audiences and rave reviews. Since then, the beloved outdoor drama has played to more than 3 million people, and it is still going strong. Produced by the Roanoke Island Historical Association at the Waterside Theater near Manteo, North Carolina, The Lost Colony has run for more than sixty summers almost without interruption. (Production was suspended during World War II, when the threat of German submarines prowling the...