Having first performed in 1947 at the Masonic Temple in DeKalb, the Stage Coach Players moved into the Ellwood family’s barn loft at Ilehamwood Farm for their next show in the summer of 1947, and they performed in that same space through the summer of 1949. At that point, the Ellwoods needed the barn to function as a barn, and May Ellwood sold the box office, the actual stagecoach she had been letting them use, to the Harold Warp Pioneer Village Museum in Minden, Nebraska.

From 1950 through 1952, the Stage Coach Players performed in a variety of spaces, including the DeKalb High School, the all-purpose rooms of DeKalb grade schools and, for “The Trial of Mary Dugan,” director Ann Eddy Gray even negotiated the use of a court room of the DeKalb County Court House.

In 1953, the Stage Coach Players moved into a permanent modular metal building acquired from the DeKalb County Board – it was part of the DeKalb County Farm. The first pay in the new building was Bernard Shaw’s “Androcles and the Lion,” directed, fittingly, by Ann Eddy Gray – the director of the first production ever in the Masonic Temple.

In 1961, the Stage Coach Players’ theatre got water after a well was dug. Though it was not open-air theatre, per say, the space did not have heat or air conditioning, so it was only available for use when the weather was not freezing – limiting performance time for sure in Northern Illinois.

The Stage Coach Players acquired their current space, at 126 S. Fifth St., in 2001. Prior to being the Stage Coach Players theatre space, it had been the Moose Hall and, for the 30 years prior to our acquisition, the Church of Christ.