Roadside Theater Receives Paul Green New Play Award

Roadside Theater received the 2005 Paul Green New Play Award for its new musical, Betsy. "Roadside Theater's 30-year effort to make theater for everyone is a link in the chain that Paul Green helped forge before we were born," said Roadside's director, Dudley Cocke, in gratefully accepting the award from the Paul Green Foundation.

The Paul Green Award means something special to Roadside because Mr. Green was an inspiration to the theater when it began in 1975. Green grew up on a cotton farm in rural Harnett County, North Carolina, and in 1927, at the age of 33, won the Pulitzer prize for Drama. He devoted his long life to racial equality and peace, and several of his plays, including The Lost Colony, are still being produced.

Roadside Theater's new musical, Betsy, is the story of a middle-aged woman of African and Scots-Irish descent searching for her roots. The play begins in Belfast, Ireland in 1794 and continues to the present with music that ranges from Old Time Mountain to Jazz. Altogether, there are 23 original compositions by Roadside's Ron Short and Nashville jazz pianist Beegie Adair.