In July of 1995, five people with a vision of a community theater in Highlands decided to act on that vision and started the Highlands Community Players (now known as Highlands Cashiers Players). Sara Mayer, Carol Lucas, Jerri Talley, Jean Morris and April Hershey each put in $100 of their own money, sat down and chose three plays -- Steel Magnolias, Dearly Departed and A Thurber Carnival -- and
wrote to get the rights to do them. They then petitioned the Highlands Chamber of Commerce to let them rent the Conference Center to put on these three plays and set out to get some platforms built to use for a stage. For the next five years we continued to schedule a fall, winter and spring play with performances on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. Today we have added another night of performances for each show - Thursday - and are still going strong. In addition we now present a summer dramatic reading production during August. In 2001 we moved into the Martin-Lipscomb Performing Arts Center giving us a much better performing space. In the summer of 2008, the Highlands Community Players merged joined forces with folks in nearby Cashiers, NC to form Highlands Cashiers Players. The two communities' cooperation is sure to heighten the success of HCP. The future continues to look bright for The Players thanks to the support of our wonderful Highlands, Cashiers, Franklin and Clayton audience.
