Special Collections at Belk Library

Lula Vollmer (1898–1955) was a playwright. A pioneer in the American folk-play, she was born in Keyser, North Carolina, and educated at what later became Asheville College. After graduation she went to New York to try to sell her play Sun-Up. Although she worked for the Theatre Guild as a box-office clerk, the Guild joined other producers in rejecting the work, which was finally mounted by a minor producer in 1923. It told the story of a vengeful mountain woman, and Vollmer waived her royalties for the play, giving them instead to help educate Southern mountaineers. In the same year she also won praise for her backwoods drama The Shame Woman (1923). None of her subsequent plays was a commercial success, although several had considerable merit. Among the more noteworthy were The Dunce Boy (1925), Trigger (1927), and The Hill Between (1938). (from Oxford Companion to American Theatre)