With its founding 86 years ago, Olney Theatre Center is the grande dame of regional theater companies in the county and the greater Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area. Its past is illustrious, serving as a summer home for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.
And its future is bright with a $34 million capital campaign nearing the finish line to update the 14-acre campus, including its historic, barn-like stage, the overcrowded scenic and costume shops, the small theater lab, outdoor amphitheater, and the offices and artist housing.
As the campaign winds down and the final construction nears completion, audiences will soon encounter state-of-the-art contemporary spaces indoors and out, which serve the multicultural audiences that make Olney Theatre a must-see for family entertainment, especially during the holiday season. But the venerable company is also beloved for introducing audiences to recent and new plays; refreshed versions of classic and modern Broadway musicals; and experimental works.
Historic Summers in the Country
Many Montgomery County residents have fond memories of attending shows at the historic main stage with its rustic barn-like features—not always ideal for sight lines—and upside-down peach basket chandeliers in the auditorium. The open-air lobby had an oak tree growing in it. That once-venerable stage served the likes of A-list Hollywood stars: Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Bob Fosse, Phillip Bosco, Eve Arden, Eva Gabor, Burl Ives, Jose Ferrer, Carol Channing, Olivia d’Havilland, Tony Randall, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Jane Seymour, Anne Revere, Frances Sternhagen, Arthur Treacher, James Broderick, Olympia Dukakis and Sir Ian McKellen, to name a few.
Founded in 1938 as a summer theater by an attorney and a judge, Stephen E. Cochran and Harold C. Smith, respectively, on a property known as the Woodlawn Lodge estate, Olney Theatre was situated in a bucolic country setting. The goal: Draw theater-goers both from Washington, D.C., and Baltimore as well as their surrounding and growing suburbs by offering theater outings away from the stultifying city heat.
“There are a lot of people out in the community for whom Olney Theatre just means so much,” says Washington, D.C., native Debbie Ellinghaus, who is in her 10th year as executive director. “In fact, some of my first memories of going to the theater are here. … I started coming when I was about 8 years old.” she adds. “I think I saw ‘Crimes of the Heart’ and ‘Noises Off.’”
Ellinghaus chatted about the theater from a corner room in the spacious old farmhouse adjacent to the historic Main Stage. Over the years, the former residence became a warren of offices and bedrooms that served the organization as both its administrative hub and artist housing. One of the benefits of the summer theater was as a rural getaway for actors, stagehands and artistic staff, who performed on what was called the “straw hat circuit.” Olney continues the tradition of housing visiting actors and artists today, both in the summer and throughout the season. They cook and eat together in a large kitchen, family style.
Alan Wade began his association with the theater in 1968.
“Through being a student at Catholic University and the drama department, I joined the National Players,” he says. “We rehearsed at the university but did our first performances before the summer tour at Olney.”
The National Players, a project of Father Gilbert Hartke, who headed the drama department from 1937 to 1974, traveled by bus each summer bringing theater to small communities across the country. The NP legacy lasted far beyond Hartke’s tenure, going on hiatus during the pandemic. Jason Loewith, Olney’s current artistic director, hopes to revive the troupe of young actors for summer tours on a regional scale in the coming years.
Rural Roots and Country Roads
“Father Hartke was a presence, in his white Dominican robes and his shock of white hair,” says Wade, who retired in 2017 from a 40-year-career teaching theater at George Washington University, “there’s no doubt about that.” He recalls Hartke’s directing technique: sitting at the back of the cavernous theater and blowing a whistle when he wanted the actors to stop for corrections. For generations, Hartke used his outsized influence and theatrical connections with local and national talent to build Olney Theatre into a formidable player in the region and beyond.
Yet it retained its rural roots.
“At the time I started working there [the theater] was 35 years old, and things were not in the best of repair,” Wade recalls, “but I didn’t think anything of the rustic nature. I was thrilled to be in a show.” He adds, “There used to be a few bedrooms behind the stage manager’s booth, which is at the rear of the old theater, and I recall staying up in one of those bedrooms. Now that was rustic. It was really countryside then.” He returned in successive years taking his final professional bows at Olney in D.C.-based playwright Ken Ludwig’s “A Comedy of Tenors” in 2019.
Theater for the New Century
Loewith, who joined Olney in 2013, once considered the rabbinate before going all-in on his love of theater. While he is well-acquainted with Olney’s history, he views the import of his mission in bringing entertaining, interesting and challenging works to 21st-century audiences in a suburban, but increasingly urban and sophisticated county, which boasts four of the 10 most diverse locations to live in the U.S.
While in some circles, Olney has been considered a bastion of suburban, gray-haired white middle-class subscribers, Loewith, who invites every theater patron to email him their thoughts during each recorded curtain speech, sees a distinctly multifaceted audience—one that crosses age, gender identity, sexual preference, political, racial, religious, cultural, ethnic and economic divides.
“There are a lot of potential [challenges] in making theater now,” Loewith says from his office. Sitting in front of a wall filled with rows of framed posters from recent productions, he adds, that prior directors wanted to build Olney into a theater modeled on its more urban competitors like Round House in downtown Bethesda or Arena Stage and the Studio Theater, both in the District. “Our strength has always been its geography. And I have spent the larger part of my career in suburban theaters outside of major cities.”
Holding a Mirror to a Diverse County
“I’d like to think that our programming reflects on the incredible diversity we have here [in Montgomery County],” he continues. “A similar philosophical shift helped me recognize that there is no such thing as a single audience here. There are multiple audiences, and we learned that while many companies rely on their subscriber base, frankly, since the pandemic, nobody can count on making work for a single audience.” In fact, he notes that one of the big surprises of last season was how popular the drag-based shows were with audiences, following an equally popular production of the Broadway hit “Kinky Boots.”
Loewith has also worked for a decade to launch Olney into the future by leaning into the patron experience. That entailed envisioning a new 21st-century campus with improved audience and performer spaces, artistic workshops and classroom space to introduce the next generation of theater makers and goers to the multifaceted skills necessary to grow new productions.
Building a 21st-century Campus on a 19th Century Country Estate
“Early [in my tenure], we made a much larger investment in the staff that built the shows and [created] the actual designs of the shows,” Loewith notes. “The first main capital project was completely overhauling the main stage and the lobby and, given how awful the conditions were in our costume shop,” renovating that workshop as well. Loewith and his colleagues have seen the lengthy narrative of Olney Theatre shift, saying, “We were no longer this scrappy, family-run summer theater. We actually had a role to play on the major important regional theater circuit.” That meant professionalizing every aspect of artistic, administrative and public-facing operations.
Recent seasons have seen the theater tackle popular musicals in intriguing ways. “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” broke from what Loewith calls “cookie cutter casting,” in selecting directors and designers with diverse backgrounds and casting both Belle and the Beast against the expected physical types—that meant that Belle was African American and tap dancer Evan Ruggiero, who performs with one leg in the tradition of dancer Peg Leg Bates, as the Beast. And its 2022 production of “The Music Man” featured an ensemble and creative team of Deaf, hearing, and hard-of-hearing artists. Earlier this season, the premiere of a new hip-hop musical, “Long Way Down,” adapted from the best-selling novel by Jason Reynolds, with a compelling plot perfect for teens and young adults.
New Works for the New Season
Loewith is looking ahead to Olney’s future in his programming of the 2024-25 season.
“This [coming] season specifically you’ll see populist work to attract audiences who don’t traditionally go to theater multiple times a year. And there’s work that multiple generations of audiences around this area will love. There is culturally specific work because we know some of the communities around us will find relevant for them. We know that folks who have not been part of the traditional theater audience need an invitation extended.”
Among the populist family fare will be a fall production of “Disney’s Frozen.” Highly stressed high schoolers and those who know and love them will connect with the world premiere musical “Little Miss Perfect” in May 2025. Joriah Kwamé became a viral TikTok star when his song “Little Miss Perfect” went viral on TikTok making the writer/composer/lyricist a sensation—other songs include “Ordinary” and “Black Girl Magic.” Sara Bareilles’s “Waitress” will also run on the Roberts Main Stage in early 2025.
As much as Loewith—and Olney audiences—love musicals, he’s always seeking new voices for serious plays. One with a decidedly Washington theme is the one-man production “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground” which is adapted by Richard Hellesen from General Eisenhower’s memoirs, speeches and letters. A hit from the London Fringe, “Sleepova” makes its U.S. debut leaning into race and youth culture in the intimate Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab. Four Black British teens wrestle with adolescent challenges and issues like disability, sexuality, religion and family. And actor/writer Michael Shayan returns, channeling his Persian-Jewish mother’s story of escaping Iran and rebuilding her life in “Avaaz,” which had a brief run in the Theater Lab earlier this year.
And Loewith looks forward to sharing Olney Theatre’s stage with critically acclaimed local company Synetic Theater, known and beloved for its silent movement-enriched versions of Shakespearean works. Next summer the company, which lost its theater space in Arlington, Virginia, will revive Ben Cunis and Paata Tsikurishvili’s adaptation of the summery comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Ellinghaus is preparing this theater grande dame for its next stage.
“When I started 10 years ago, the budget was just under $6 million. We’ve grown that much … a lot, I think. But we’re operating three theaters year ‘round. We have very lean staff—just two people in marketing to sell all these tickets.”
The $9.5 million annual budget is lean and mean. Once all the spaces open to the public, the three indoor performing spaces will offer multiple venues for community engagement. Loewith hopes to partner with both community and professional performing companies in the area to keep the stages full all year. He also envisions making various spaces available for rental—private parties, weddings, corporate events, quinceañeras, on the revamped historic stage, renamed the Bernard Family Theater, with flexible seating.
Finally, during the pandemic plans for the Staging the Future campaign added an outdoor space. Now the Root Family Stage at Omi’s Pavilion offers a lineup of standup comedy, concerts covering popular music across genres from rock ’n’ roll, soul, pop, rockabilly and classics from the ’40s through the ’00s.
“If you had asked me 11 years ago when I came here if there was a place and interest in booking a Grateful Dead or Queen cover band,” Loewith says, “I would have told you, ‘That’s ridiculous.’”
“But it’s Olney Theatre Center for the Arts,” he emphasizes, “why can’t we be inviting? I certainly hope that the people who come to see Better Off Dead [the Grateful Dead cover band] will want to come back to see other shows or take part in other things we do. I have always said that if everybody in our community that has a reason to come to this theater is here once a year, then we have succeeded.”
For further information on Olney Theatre Center or to view the new season, visit their website.
