Overview
About Black Hills Playhouse
Why stop
- Strong acting, singing and sets in a small house.
Heads up
- A seasonal show takes planning and a park entrance license.
Map
Where it is
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Custer Tour Guide
Your drive to Black Hills Playhouse, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Custer State Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Custer audio tourRecorded for this place
Black Hills Playhouse: A Summer Show“You're coming up on Black Hills Playhouse, a summer theatre tucked among the pines near Center Lake.”
Plays as you drive up to Black Hills Playhouse in the Parkwolf Custer Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Seven Centuries in a Pine
- Center Lake: A Lake Day and Lost Stone Paths
- The Pine's Two Kinds of Cones
- Ice in the Granite Cracks
- 82 audio storiesacross Custer’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Bison, Wapiti, Bighorn Sheep, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 40 trails, 49 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“We recently toured Badlands, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and more! We learned so much from this app as we toured each of these sites. The audio tours are worth the money.”
Guide
More about Black Hills Playhouse
A summer show in the parkBlack Hills Playhouse is a professional summer-stock theatre at 24834 South Playhouse Road in…
Black Hills Playhouse is a professional summer-stock theatre at 24834 South Playhouse Road in Custer State Park, with a 345-seat main house in a pine-wooded campus near Center Lake. Keep it in your plans if you want a full evening of live theatre; this is a performance destination, not a quick scenic stop. The small house brings you close to the stage, and audiences often praise the acting, singing and sets. The shows change each season, so look at the production before booking. Reservations are recommended, and you need a Custer State Park entrance license to drive in.
Make a night of itThe theatre is air-conditioned, and the campus has a concession snack bar and a picnic shelter,…
The theatre is air-conditioned, and the campus has a concession snack bar and a picnic shelter, Haberman Hall. Bring a picnic for the shelter or pick up a snack before the show. Performances are seasonal, so fit the visit around a show date rather than dropping in like a roadside stop.
Started for rural audiencesUniversity of South Dakota professor Warren M.
University of South Dakota professor Warren M. “Doc” Lee founded the company in 1946 to bring professional theatre to rural communities and give theatre professionals a place to train and work. Its first season staged five shows for 2,844 people. The present 345-seat theatre was built in 1955.
A campus that grew with the companyThe first company used abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps buildings from 1934.
The first company used abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps buildings from 1934. The snack bar and office is the only original building still standing. Seasonal actors, designers and technicians live and rehearse in the park, and the campus added Haberman Hall as a picnic shelter in 1995. The organization adopted Theatre 605 as its corporate name in 2025, but Black Hills Playhouse remains the name of this venue and its flagship summer program.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Custer
993 sightingsBisonMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
91 sightingsWapitiMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
260 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
85 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
259 sightingsBurroMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
711 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 6 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Custer. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
