The Parkway Playhouse, located in Burnsville, North Carolina, is the oldest continually operating summer theater in North Carolina.
It was established in 1947 by W.R. Taylor, a professor of drama from the Woman's College of North Carolina, which later became the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
The Parkway Playhouse, for many years, was operated as a summer stock venue and a sponsored extension of the drama departments at UNC-G and the University of Miami. In the 1990s the Parkway Playhouse became an independent theater company, and is now operating as a small professional theater company serving the mountain region of Western North Carolina.