Dinner Theater in Central Illinois Barn to Close

GOODFIELD, Ill. (AP) — A dinner theater that operated inside a barn in central Illinois is closing just short of its 40th anniversary.

The (Bloomington) Pantagraph reports Conklin’s Barn II Dinner Theatre in Goodfield sustained severe wind damage during an August storm.

Owner Mary Simon says an engineer who inspected the property deemed the barn non-repairable and denied an insurance claim. Simon says that left the theater in “extreme financial peril.”

She says the dinner theater had no choice other than closing.

The theater opened on Halloween night 1975 inside the 74-year-old former cattle sale barn.

Pantagraph theater critic Patricia Stiller has reviewed shows at the Barn since 1998. She says it’s difficult to articulate the loss of the Barn not just for the theater community, but for central Illinois.

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