Back in 1937, Amelia Earhart disappeared, New York City’s mayor was Fiorello LaGuardia and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened with about 200,000 people crossing it the first day it opened. Also during this year, a new car cost about $760 and a gallon of milk was 50 cents.

It was also the year a group called the Carolina Playmakers opened The Lost Colony, a play that is still performed today at Waterside Theatre on Roanoke Island on the North Carolina shore.

The play, written by the state’s Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Paul Green, is the first and longest running historical outdoor drama.

Yet, the 70 years under the play’s belt is not nearly as old as its subject, the story of America’s earliest beginnings when about 120 English men, women and children attempted to settle in the New World in 1587. Shortly after arriving, settler Eleanor Dare gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America.

However, the play’s longevity is better than the settlement’s. After going back to England for a few years, Governor John White returned in 1590 to find the colony vanished, with few clues as to its fate. The Lost Colony, performed near the very site of the colonists’ ill-fated settlement, recounts the actual historical events with the fictional story of the colonists’ spirit, courage and dream of freedom.

Since the performance’s first words were spoken, more than 4 million visitors have seen this dramatic story unfold under the stars.

The Lost Colony’s 2007 Production Season runs June 1-Aug. 20 Monday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m. with a number of extra lectures and exhibits marking the special accomplishment.

Four-time Tony Award Winning Production Designer William Ivey Long, who is a Lost Colony alumnus, will lecture July 6 on the Carolina Playmakers, the group who came to open The Lost Colony 70 years ago.

The Festival Park Art Gallery will display “70 Years of Inspiration”, original artwork inspired by The Lost Colony during July, and from March 23-Dec. 31 the Outer Banks Historical Center Gallery will display “A Lost Colony Retrospective” a collection of ephemera, documents, costumes, props and photography.

Additionally, the Dare County Library will display costumes on loan from local families and the Outer Banks Tea Cup Quilters Lost Colony’s inspired quilt will be on display at the Festival Park.

Ticket prices range from $8 for children to $20 for Producer’s Circle seats.
Call 252-473-3414 to purchase tickets.

If you go, be sure to visit nearby Elizabethan Gardens, open year-round, seven days a week. The 10.5-acre public garden will have Tea with the Queen on June 28. Members of the Queen’s court share tea and dessert with guests in the setting of the gardens. Admission to the Gardens and a backstage tour of the Waterside Theatre are included in the ticket price ($22 for adults, $11 for youth 7-15 and free for children 6 and under). Call 252-473-3234 for more information.