The historic Dawn Theater is closing its doors to public live entertainment, but the theater will still be available to rent for private events.
“The theater is not closing,” said co-owner of The Dawn Theater Marcy Horton. “That is an ill-placed rumor.”
The cost of live entertainment licensing and the lack of public interest have caused the owners, Jeff and Marcy Horton, to close the theater to live public entertainment and transition back to the private-event format they used before.
“I think the economy had a lot to do with it. There’s just not a lot of people in the area that have disposable income to go out and see a show. They are fairly expensive to put on,” said The Dawn Theater manager Peggy Williams.
“I hate to say there was a lack of support, because it sounds negative, but truly we really did have a lack of support in Hillsdale.”
Williams said that during the past live productions, approximately half of the audience was from outside of Hillsdale. The Hortons and Williams agreed that bring in live bands just was not profitable for the theater.
“We found that having musical events occur, that there wasn’t enough local interest to make it worth the cost of bringing in bands to perform,” Marcy Horton said. “So we went back to our original format, which was to be an event venue.”
Jeff and Marcy Horton bought the theater in 2008 after it had been vacant for four years. They restored The Dawn to its former glory, which first opened in 1919, and made it available to the public for private events.
Marcy Horton said that people have rented the theater for a variety of events: reunions, high school proms, private and corporate parties, weddings and receptions, birthday and holiday parties, etc. The theater has a full bar, movie screen, projector, and sound system available for private events if desired.
