PlayMakers Repertory Company

Joseph Haj (2006-2015)

PlayMakers Repertory Company is the professional theater company in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. PlayMakers Repertory Company is the successor of the Carolina Playmakers and is named after the Historic Playmakers Theatre. PlayMakers was founded in 1976 and is affiliated with the Dramatic and performing arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The company consists of residents, guest artists, professional staff and graduate students in the Department for Dramatic Arts at UNC and produces seasons of six main stage productions of contemporary and classical works that run from September to April. PlayMakers Repertory Company has a second stage series, PRC², that examines controversial social and political issues. The company has been acknowledged by the Drama League of New York and American Theatre magazine for being one of the top fifty regional theaters in the country. PlayMakers operates under agreements with the Actors' Equity Association, United Scenic Artists, and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

In 1918, Professor Frederick Koch came to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to teach the University's first courses in playwriting. In that same year, he founded the Carolina Playmakers theater company for the production of these original plays. Koch and the Playmakers mainly produced what they considered to be “folk plays.” Koch defined a folk play as being based on “the legends, superstitions, customs, environmental differences, and the vernacular of the common people.” He saw them as primarily “realistic and human,” and chiefly concerned with “man’s conflict with the forces of nature and his simple pleasure in being alive.”

Working with folk plays encouraged Koch's students to write about the small communities and rural populations they were likely to be familiar with, and, as in the experience of Paul Green, to address the experiences of "marginalized populations of the South," such as African-Americans and American Indians.