Back in the 1930s, a group of performers organized themselves as the Vagabond Players, and they performed plays all over Western North Carolina.

Let's find out how they established the Flat Rock Playhouse and how they're still entertaining audiences today.

[bright music] - So Flat Rock Playhouse is a professional producing theater.

Meaning we belong to the Actor's Equity Association mothership in New York City.

We are the state theater in North Carolina because in the early '60s, the North Carolina Government Assembly said, "Hey, we've been paying attention to what you guys are doing over there.

We know that it's a really special theater and we wanna honor your professional excellence with this moniker."

And we've been proud to have it ever since.

We actually started as the Vagabond Players in the late 30s by our founder Robroy Farquhar, who was looking for a permanent home.

He came up here, fell in love with it, brought his traveling group of actors, set up a couple of shows.

World War II came.

He left, he went, he fought, he came back.

And after the war was committed, then to saying, you know, "Hey, this is my life, and I'm coming back to this small town and I'm gonna start my theater."

So we started here on this rock in 1952 under a Barnum & Bailey circus tent.

And now here we are almost 75 years later, and we're a year-round regional professional company, still adhering to the two founding missions of the Farquhars, which is professional excellence, arts education for the next generation of professional artists and for the audiences that come and enjoy what we do.

- So what makes us a producing theater is we start from the ground up.

We don't call in a truck that brings the set to us.

We don't call in a a costume shop that's just gonna deliver us the costumes.

We're building everything.

The scenery, and we're building the furniture, the props, the chairs from ground up.

Our seamstress are making costumes either from pulling from local vintage shops and making them fit the actors or they'll start with a pattern.

We have a group of about six lighting and sound people that will hang every light we have in the theater and program it.

And all of our actors are wearing a microphone and we have three members that are just managing that sound.

So it's a group that we have that we bring in from pretty much March and through December that's with us all year long.

- So we work really hard to provide something for everybody.

So we have a really robust Music on the Rock concert series that features everybody from the Beach Boys to Lead Zeppelin, to Billy Joel and Elton John, and just about anything that you can think of.

And then our bread and butter is our main stage season.

So musicals, plays, dramas, comedies, mysteries.

We do a little bit of everything.

- Every season's different, and I budget per that season.

So for the most part, we're dealing with about 40 to 50 production artists that come in from out of state or out of the country to come in to help us produce these shows.

- First time we drove by, we saw this sweet little theater here, and so we decided to give it a try.

And we were just blown away.

And it's really, it's turned into a love affair.

And I've gotten involved volunteering.

We come every year, we have season tickets.

It's just like opening a present every time you walk through those doors because it's just new and different and totally unexpected.

- I've been here about eight times, nine times.

I don't know.

I love...

It's a small place.

They do a fantastic job.

We're just in New York to the Broadway, and they do as good as Broadway.

They really do.

- We have eight shows a week, up to eight shows a week, usually Wednesday through Sunday.

So there's a time for everybody that might want to come and visit with us.

We've got a really long legacy in this county.

The largest part of our audience comes from North Carolina and comes from this region, but we're really proud to say that we actually see people from literally every state in the country almost every year.

- One year, I bought tickets for my family, and my son-in-law said, "Betty, that was so good."

They're all good.

Oh, you better come.

Really.

You go out of town to place, but they're better here.

- The quality that we're doing here is I'm hiring designers, I'm hiring technicians that are doing this on Broadway.

So you're getting Broadway quality work here in the mountains of North Carolina for a fraction of the cost.

- There is literally no other theater like us anywhere in the state, and we're nestled quite beautifully in the awesome mountains, the Appalachian Mountains.

Come stay with us for a weekend.

It's a great getaway for everybody in the state to come and check us out.

- The Flat Rock Playhouse is at 2661 Greenville Highway in Flat Rock.

To book your ticket for an upcoming performance, call them at 828-693-0403 or visit their website at flatrockplayhouse.org.