University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The Carolina Playmakers was the theatrical company in residence at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, from 1918 to 1976, when it was succeeded by the PlayMakers Repertory Company. Although they often staged classic and contemporary plays, the Playmakers specialized in the writing and production of folk plays, a dramatic genre "concerned… with the legends, superstitions, customs, environmental differences, and the vernacular of the common people." The Carolina Playmakers collection of playbills and programs consists of about 350 items documenting the theatrical activities organized or sponsored by the Playmakers, Frederick H. Koch, and, more generally, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, between 1918 and 1953.