WHITE DRESSES (A Tragedy of Negro Life) BY PAUL GREENE
Reading edition
White Dresses is reprinted by special permission of Professor Frederick H. Koch. Copyrighted by the Carolina Playmakers, Inc., Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For permission to produce, address Frederick H. Koch, director.
PAUL GREENE
Paul Greene, one of the most promising of the University of North Carolina Playmakers, was born in 1894 on a farm near Lillington, North Carolina. He has received his education at Buies Creek Academy and at the University of North Carolina, from which he received his bachelor's degree in 1921. He saw service with the A. E. F. in France, with the 105th United States Engineers.
In addition to White Dresses, Mr. Greene has written a number of one-act plays: The Last of the Lowries (to be included in a forthcoming volume of Carolina Folk-Plays, published by Henry Holt & Company), The Miser, The Old Man of Edenton, The Lord's Will, Wreck P'int, Granny Boling (in The Drama for August-September, 1921). The first three plays named above were produced originally by the Carolina Playmakers at Chapel Hill.
White Dresses is an excellent example of folk-play of North Carolina. This play was written in English 31, the course in dramatic composition at the University of North Carolina conducted by Professor Frederick H. Koch. "The Aim of the Carolina Playmakers," says Professor Koch, "is to build up a genuinely native drama, a fresh expression of the folk-life in North Carolina, drawn from the rich background of local tradition and from the vigorous new life of the present day. In these simple plays we hope to contribute something of lasting value in the making of a new folk-theatre and a new folk-literature."
Out of the many conflicts of American life, past and present, Mr. Greene sees possibilities for a great native drama. White Dresses presents a fundamental aspect of the race problem in America.
CHARACTERS
Candace Mclean, an old negro woman, Mary's aunt
Mary Mclean, a quadroon girl, niece of Candace
Jim Matthews, Mary's lover
Henry Morgan, the landlord, a white man