Before the first actor placed a foot on the stage at the Coshocton fairground theatre, two local amateur theatre productions had been presented at the Plainfield Grange Hall and Coshocton’s Central High School building. From these productions in 1942, a small core group of theatre enthusiasts emerged to form what would be known as “The Footlight Players”. What this group now needed was a home, what they created was an institution. 

It was like a scene from an early MGM musical where some eager young actor-in-the-rough shouts, ”My uncle has a barn and there are some costumes in the attic!” that ignited 50 plus years of community theatre in Coshocton. And a barn it was. The initial venue of the Footlight Players was an old Grange theatre building at the Coshocton County Fairgrounds. A building which…according to one of the group’s founders…was once used to house chickens or “some other unsavory thing”. In order to properly develop an unheated building with no running water, so much work would have to be done. The renovation of such a space was surely overwhelming to those about to shoulder this enormous undertaking.

The theatre’s genesis was anything but smooth. The seats were originally rough sawn benches and the floor was raw earth concealed by wood chips. Although the circus-like floor was later replaced by cement, the seats were another story altogether. According to the publication “The First Fifty Years Of The Footlight Players”, 150 folding rowboat seats were to be ordered from Roscoe Hardware and installed in time for the first production.