300 S. Boundary St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
The Forest Theatre is a stone amphitheater built into the hillside on the eastern edge of the UNC-Chapel Hill campus, contiguous with Battle Park. Outdoor drama was first performed on this site in 1916 to celebrate the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death. The location was chosen by William C. Coker, a botany professor and founder of the Coker Arboretum (which is now also under the Garden’s care). A few years later, Professor Frederick Koch, founder of the Carolina Playmakers, developed the site into a permanent theater.
With funding from the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, the stone stage backdrop and terraced seating were rebuilt in 1940 and further improved in 1948. In 1953, the University dedicated the theater to Koch, calling it “an open air palace of light and sound, haunt of birds and breezes and human voices, home of natural beauty, poetry and drama, set upon the warm earth, in enduring stone, to commemorate an ardent genius.”
Surrounded by Battle Park’s 93 acres of mostly primordial forest, the Forest Theatre has hosted folk dramas written by renowned Carolina alumni Thomas Wolfe and Paul Green, and it continues to be used for performances to this day.