Frederick Henry Koch

Frederick Henry Koch (born Sept. 12, 1877, Covington, Ky., U.S.—died Aug. 16, 1944, Miami Beach) was the founder of the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina and is considered the father of American folk drama.

Koch received his B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1900 and his M.A. from Harvard University in 1909. In 1905 he began teaching at the University of North Dakota, forming the Dakota Playmakers in 1910. Called to the University of North Carolina in 1918, he introduced his course in playwriting and created the Playmakers, whose theatre became the first state-subsidized playhouse in America and whose company toured the Southeast presenting folk plays. He also founded and directed a Canadian playwriting school at Banff, Alta.

Koch’s work had far-reaching effect. His students, among them Thomas Wolfe, Maxwell Anderson, and Paul Green, testified to his influence, and his ideas and activities were seminal in the Little Theatre movement in the United States and in the increasing respectability of theatre in the academic curriculum. Eleven volumes of folk plays appeared under his editorship.