The Lost Colony (play)

The Lost Colony is a play based on accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts to establish a permanent settlement on Roanoke Island, in what was then part of the Colony of Virginia. The play has been performed since 1937 in an outdoor amphitheater located on the site of the original Roanoke Colony in the Outer Banks, near present-day Manteo, North Carolina. More than four million people have seen it since that year. It received a special Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre award in 2013.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green, The Lost Colony marks a shift in Green's work from more traditional forms of drama to focus on the creation of large-scale outdoor musical spectacles he termed "Symphonic Dramas." As of 2012, it is the United States' second longest running historical outdoor drama, behind The Ramona Pageant produced in California.

Before Jamestown and Plymouth, a group of about 120 men, women and children established one of the first English settlements in the New World on Roanoke Island in 1587. Shortly after arriving in this New World, colonist Eleanor Dare, daughter of Governor John White, gave birth to Virginia Dare. The Governor's granddaughter was the first English child born in North America.

Life on the island was difficult for the colonists. Low on supplies and facing retaliation from the Native Americans they had displaced, the colonists sent Governor White to England in the summer of 1587 for supplies. Because of the impending war with Spain, White was unable to return to Roanoke Island until 1590. When he arrived, the colony had vanished. People believe the word "CROATOAN" was carved on a post. The fate of those first colonists remains a mystery to this day. Mainline historians believe that the colonists died at the site.

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