Paul Green’s The House of Connelly

One of Paul Green’s best plays, The House of Connelly, was the first play performed (on Broadway in 1931) by the renowned Group Theatre of New York. This book reintroduces the play, and the playwright—famous in his day, but largely forgotten now, although his outdoor symphonic drama The Lost Colony continues to be performed every summer in Manteo, North Carolina. The House of Connelly, is a more traditional drama, comparable to the writing of Tennessee Williams, and the editor asserts that the play deals more directly and fully with racial issues of the early 20th-century South than Williams did in his work. A new edition of the play includes both the original tragic ending and the revised ending Green wrote upon the Group Theatre directors’ request. The writing, production and publication history of the play is provided, as well as a scene-by-scene critical analysis and a discussion of the 1934 film adaptation, Carolina. The play’s theme is change and Green shows with both endings that the South had to change to survive.

Margaret D. Bauer is the Ralph Hardee Rives Chair of Southern Literature and a Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and editor of the North Carolina Literary Review.

By Paul Green
Edited by Margaret D. Bauer
Introduction by Laurence G. Avery
Afterword by Jim Grimsley

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 168
Bibliographic Info: 12 photos, appendix, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9444-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1791-6
Imprint: McFarland

Preface and Acknowledgments 1
Introduction: The House of Connelly, Paul Green, and the Way He Worked, by Laurence G. Avery 3
The House of Connelly, A Drama of the Old South and the New, in Two Acts, by Paul Green 9
Act I, Scene 1 10
Act I, Scene 2 21
Act I, Scene 3 39
Act II, Scene 1 51
Act II, Scene 2 67
Act II, Green’s original Scene 3 82
Act II, Scene 3, revised ending for the Group Theatre 96
Paul Green’s The House of Connelly, a Play (and Playwright) “worth bothering about”: A Scene-by-Scene Analysis, by Margaret D. Bauer 107
The House of Connelly from Script to Stage 109
Act I, Scene 1 112
Act I, Scene 2 115
Act I, Scene 3 118
Act II, Scene 1 120
Act II, Scene 2 123
Act II, Scene 3 126
Act II, Scene 3, the original ending 128
Act II, Scene 3, the revised ending 130
Two Endings, One Theme: The Need for Change 131
From Stage to Screen: Carolina 135
Paul Green Revisited 146
Afterword, by Jim Grimsley 149
Appendix: Reviews of the 1931 Broadway Performance 151
Notes 152
References 155
About the Contributors 157
Index 158