North Carolina People; Paul Green, Playwright

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I'll ask out on a people has its cameras. Wendy Oakes this evening in Chatham County the home of Elizabeth and Paul Grey of North Carolina has a senior philosopher and friend to all citizens. It is Paul Green and we all know as the author of The Lost Colony and seven other outdoor dramas that appear staged each summer all over the United States. Paul it's a real privilege to come and greet talk with you again in your yard. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. I really do value this opportunity to visit and I want to begin by asking you to tell us how you see and feel the country's reaction in this presidential campaign right now on what do you see going on here. Well that's a big question. I see I see the drama of these two gentlemen and that same time I see you something of a

degradation degradation of the democratic process by which our leaders are elected and I don't know what to do about it. It just mean that. First let me put it this way that the process has gone on too long in this country. Well I don't know how much tax payer I live a bit and I vote I voted yes that absentee. I have to be away. And. There's growing up in Michigan watching the whole works thing in suspicion. That somehow the free enterprise system is failing. Now why is it failing. Well one reason so far. I have a folklore philosophy sure. One reason is that somehow our documentation on which shadow system rests the far as the documents.

So far as I know you know all the founding fathers documentation. That is an absolute clamorous call to arms for rights privileges and that's understandable because at the time we were fighting OK Angel wars and fighting a lot of subtle corruption and so on and Jefferson and Washington even and. Adam was one row of course later and Benjamin Franklin. They had naturally insisted on one of the color freedom rights of the individual. Now I may be wrong but so far as I know there's not one word in all those documents that says these freedoms have back a relative responsibility. All they perish. So that's a big short answer the

problem of democracy the democracy that got itself into his band. Do I thing to an excessive dependence upon rights privileges that passion to license and the response are billeted to these freedoms has been and I liked it. Now I've been all over Russia and Russia. If they do the very opposite they have got all the rights and liberty is swallowed up by responsibility to the government. So where there are excessive in one way you're leading toward a sort of tyranny over the individual. Here we go again through an over freedom where the individual so that their sense and care for the public weal. Is weak. And that for all you cry out Oh inflation well. I'm being watched now. Well why inflation. Well because everybody is after his

own part. I raise or I raise Irish Irish so like the fellow who washed two calves he told me he watched them fight one time on top of the other. Terror disappeared in the sky. So that's where we are now unless we can reborn. Again a rebirth. To a commensurate sense of responsibility to the public. As for rights of a person. And get the balance we can just holla. Reagan can attack Carter Karthik and attack Reagan. And that means they ignore the real issue all among the great institutions of life. That affect what you just said. Well this rebirth process necessarily have to begin in the family. It begins with two places the family. And the school. In some ways Bill. Our school system is a farce.

Our cook got a letter recently from. Her teacher about her little boy. Well evidently the boy hadn't been paying attention on class the way he should. Then let out one just yet only a page long. And I defy you to théo avoid it and then it had the garbage the verb verbiage and so on. So she didn't know what it meant she brought it for you. I said well it means. That Tommy is not paying and enough attention. And I've been aware of and wrongly and listen to the speaker so well you know it's so easy to savings but somehow I know one place in this country and one school system where the where are they. Damage to public property it runs to seventy and eighty thousand dollars and I hear no sense of responsibility so when I think about over on our license plates we got first in

freedom. See again where we could put responsibility on us through a lot of worry but assured them that. Is it not a fact. From your experience that actually when young people understand what you just said in the sense of being taught this both formally and by example that they respond. Of course of course that challenge the challenge. Half an hour or so. It's in the home and in the school we are not teaching here. Well I just repeat what I said. Well in all of your plays and your writings you always speak to us about courage and will in the time of nation and tenacity and humility. Manifestations of the American character. Is this nothing on a national posture. This problem that we talk about when it happens but in these

outdoor dramas historical dramas and I do you know with our heritage these people that are put on the stage of Washington Jefferson Franklin even down in New York and say you know obviously you know good Spaniards M. Dasch. Well in that play I have Menendez to say something somebody said to the head of his religion you can't believe this. This question he said even if Bob belief were wrong I would still believe it because they have nothing better to believe. Well less of sort of a grace note on the story but. It happens that the American people all over this country are responding to these players because they show real men and women struggling with some problem. And she did it well determined to overcome. I don't want to talk too

long. Yeah but you know. That other place where we were talking about a flake and I was telling you that I want to write a play on this particular subject and that I've written one on generally and it's very tough because generally was on the wrong side when I was a commotion in the rear of the hall and when it quieted down I found out the mayor fell out of his chair when I said that generally it was on the wrong side. But generally at the end of his. War the war he failure he said. We did our best but that he sat in the hall in the Richmond broke three daughters and an invalid wife and they came and offered him $50000 to lead the armies of Egypt $50000 to hit a railroad here in the north it turned him down. There came three or four phone lines down from Lynchburg said we got a little school Washington

school. And if you could come generally with shame to ask you and take that screw we'd appreciate it. We can pay you fifteen hundred dollars a year. He says I'll take it. And he went to this school. He became Washington Lee and he built it up and he wrote his his son the greatest mistake I ever made toward becoming a soldier. When all of these plays they have these American heritage people struggling for something and the American people flocked to them because they like that kind of struggle. Isn't that really the vacuum we see in our country today and that the people are looking for that kind of spirit that kind of leadership that kind of crusading spirit and they don't find. Yeah we are like our hero genre and you know for a miserable failure life has a pain in the ballet and a paper to bring it out but she has something wrong

with us so that's how far off we are and I remember once only MGM a lot and I walked in I was for people showing them around and Clark Gable came around the corner suddenly and when a lady in the crowd said I think he has then fainted. He was a hero. So in a way these outdoor dramas are trying to introduce real heroes back into the Americans. I'm talking too much. No you're not. This is exactly why we're here. Suppose you had eight or ten young writers sitting out here at Windy oaks with you in this magnificent tree this afternoon talking about drama poetry. What advice would you give them today Paul. I would. Advise them to head of state in playwriting to read all the good players they could see as many good players as they could. Keep a

daily journal in which they're described the web and the father parents and write a lot of dialogue in preparation and then pick out something. You don't find a play. Created in a life any more than your fine cigars Roro not to back a plan you've got no material you can make them. But that's the kind of thing that would be the ROA laboratory experience. And then in a group to get together and write something way Prakash dead read it talk about it that I began and the first thing you know you've got a play when for example when the people from Texas kingly you about doing the drama there. I've always known you to be a person just work and work and then work some more but. How extensively did you have to prepare yourself so straight before you started writing on that.

Well this particular play started rhythm. There was an article in the Reader's Digest that they had wrists somebody read and they wrote me and they said we've got here one of the great wonders of nature we've got a great canyon that's been washed in the panhandle in this flat country. And it's so marvelous that people like to come and look at this canyon and we wonder if we couldn't have a plane. Well John Parker who just recently died where you flew out and we looked at this place and the power was not of human beings but of nature. Struck immediately. So I said if I could here in this place and do a play in which I could get the powers of nature. I could put on a strong arm and I got to have a hurricane thunder and lightning and show man with Conan this tremendous power X

is a natural activity and then I have a story. Watch the story. Well the panhandlers are you know is a dry hard country so I decided to say more story or get a young man who moved out a lot of move from here after the Civil War. Who goes out there and tries to make it and he fights that are and so on. And it has another Banna cowboy and there's a girl in between and the pharma. And the cowboy. That's the love story. And naturally I sided with the farmer. He has a song or the farmer feeds them all feeds them all and in the end what I had in this family down in the canyon they're having a picnic and you hear a rumble of thunder and the boy he just LOVE WITH A GIRL BUT he is too timid to show. Sure. I understand the storm well and we bring on that storm and I

tell you we put on a storm then stormed to the script called for a flash of lightning to come down and hit the earth. Well they finally figured out a way to do it so that after about 10 minutes I have one of the very times of my life I have a nature really exploding. And man in the middle of it and the girl is SO EXCITED AND HE'S SO EXCITED. They haven't declared their love but she suddenly flies into his arms with a big crash of lightning and the wake up and then a lot of so I use the storm theatrically. But at the same time and him at the same time I have a tremendous chorus with loud speakers buried in the Earth 10 or 12 feet in size where the hymn to Joy Shelah and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and I tell you when they start people stand up and yell. Because they are. Yeah well you know back to that group sitting out here with you under the oak tree

to create that scene that was certainly born of some of your experience as a boy in Johnson County and seeing nature's fury in tobacco fields dogs I'm sure and how do you talk to them about that factor of drama playwriting that the great human experience when you see old Tom and the last comic book couple yesterday. Well you know a historical thing like that and that's the advice I give the student and read all you can know that subject. I went to England and visited and I even went to severe Will Hunting for their original music stuff. And steep yourself in it and then when you don't have historical records you could do like a farmer laying out a road across through across a field put your stakes. And in the last comma there were certain historical facts. And so on and then I could feel it in

between where one thing that bothered me was that I had an Irish fare the husband of Ellen that. He had the name and and I asked and I was raised in a home in a county. You know and I was one of the law are so awful rocking you for when a nice as a hero. So. You invented a love story but the essence of that play to me was to take a drunk Michael Tong and reducing down and out previous or AOLA of him and running through all this suffering and in the end to bring it out on top of the parapet. And he said it. I who were never lately nothing I am becoming somebody. Tried item I have to have six to so I can be fair. About her smell you don't marry out of me.

So the essence of that story is how man starting at the bottom fighter years away along with an I video a purpose can win in the end even as he marches away into the darkness never to be heard from again. One of the most powerful stories of human fulfillment you'll ever say you do. Modern motion pictures do this kind of teaching to the public. I tried when I worked in Hollywood or a lot I wrote 25 or 30 move. Every now and then I'd try to slip in something I wrote in something about Sam Gore and he said we have only he said. Nobody wants to hear that I said you're wrong. They want to hear that. I know you said no. And so. But I did. Warner Brothers tried it once with the film and there was a farmer Theo and things they said we don't we're just going to try

and. You know we're going to farm and so I wrote it and they let it go let it go. And there was a struggle between a tenant farm and their landlord. Bette Davis played the lead in it and. She has a line to show that she falls in love with Tim a boy falls in love with her I like that sort of thing to lure fellow for a little with her girl and she has a little line in that show I'd like to kiss her but I just washed my hair. But these things players have to deal with real people and I'm not interested in the. Whole homosexuality thing. Like that's why they and do or you tell such great human stories that Paul if you look at our country and the world community of nations particularly say in North America we need to do other things as a foreign power do we not in the sense the eyes of other countries are more in the human relationship area.

Yes I couldn't. Not for me to know what it is for me to to say my say. I've maintained from the very beginning way back when the League of Nations were started and the model commitment of this nation was made. I thought I was plowing down our economy. I said Glory to God you know we have. We rarely go and where we should go never elected a man. Woodrow Wilson Well he's already elected. He was spokesman for it and I followed that fella. I read his speech crossing the campus here there says a war to end war. This is a war to make there we're safe for democracy. I turn right around and enlisted Tom Wolfe was here and we were still but he was too young to go so I went and I followed Woodrow Wilson into the British army and brought. Him to Paris watched him.

Saw him welcomed there like a slave here then saw us corrode and corrupt and destroyed their lead. Henry Cabot Lodge we DME Burra Hiram Johnson and that's where we made the great departure. And we haven't recovered. And for me with from the cotton for you I would say of the Vietnam War was a compounding of our errors. And when you come in and commit so much CNN How do you repent. Well I want to talk about North Carolina with you a little bit. You've certainly been a student of this fair land for a long long time. What do you what do you see this as a state moving in your you know well in North Carolina is doing something that is very thrilling it is to my way of thinking leading really leading the sun valley leading the nation in many

ways and the clamor and the call and the establishment. What I say is the true philosophy from man and that is the place of the true. Appreciate the man who finally appreciates his environment put flowers around the house and so on. So that now in North Carolina. Has developed and is developing leadership in the arts it is the time of the artist in the world. And to me the artist is the top man in education and everything because he is the man that comes to appreciate and preserve the beauty that we have in North Carolina. This institution is in the very middle of it and it's weakened in some spots. Our drama having gone forward is assured but all in all we are a real power in the years in this new age

of the arts. Now this is an all encompassing observation of yours is it. The play the drama of the states that August recess right painting point sure get you to take the North Carolina writer's conference. We started with three to four people. Now we have a huge crowd every year we read the books on the table. And this creativity at work. And so for me we're finally becoming civilized because one of its great expressions of what you're saying is the North Carolina School of the arts itself. Oh yeah and I will orchestra music. Oh and this new school of scientific scrutiny and Governor Sanford and others are brought forward. Paul I know anyone sitting here having the privilege I have of visiting would you would want to ask this question What are you working on now your next great creative effort. Well I've collected and tremendous a lot of folklore and I think Cape Fear Valley my

people I call it. Cape Fear Valley encompasses about 8000 square miles with hardly a valley by this they are wary of calling her that way. And. Elizabeth years ago collected a lot of stuff for Howard Odo and this is a how to completion for customs beliefs religion and I find B.O. all the time bringing in religion you know whom. And so I got a lot of a lot about that and it and. A lot of stories I have a point like well a fella thank the word guts I got alphabetically on the guts I tell the story of where Dave Brown. Davis Kind of around here came down to die and history has some of the funniest and Dave not if your town appreciate all you've been we've been doing some of us are going to jail you know we want to sell the home alone in the house and he says You mean for me to die with my sins on me. They said well if you don't

we are in trouble. So he died with his mouth shut so a lot of little story like that. And then I haven't been thinking about a lot. The tragedy of Chong I want to do this for New York a very compact close play. This young man son is to die as a traitor and how he prepared for death. He claims he had to die with honor. And the one key word his Honor we've lost that we're young and we've lost doing to it the same I'm sorry that we've run out of time Paul but I want to say for every North Carolinian how much we appreciate what you've done for our heritage you Elizabeth. How much North Carolina people appreciates this chance to view or backyard. You're very you give us a voice you're worth. Your.

Work. Or. Your. Were worth your way. This program was produced by the University of North Carolina Center for Public Television.