Olney Theatre Center for the Arts Master Plan
Olney Theatre Center for the Arts is a progressive theatre company that occupies a sprawling, 13.5-acre site in the gently rolling landscape of rural Maryland just a few miles from downtown Olney. This Master Plan established the foundation for a long-term transformation of Olney Theatre Center’s historic campus. Rather than imposing a new identity, the plan embraced the site’s layered, imperfect, and deeply personal character.
Guided by the theme of “going downstream,” the planning effort recognized that the campus had evolved organically since 1898, beginning with Crawford House and a simple barn for performances, and should continue to evolve in ways that honor its roots. The goal was never to polish the campus into something unrecognizable, but to frame its existing charm as an essential asset in shaping its future.
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Inclusion Drives Innovation
The Olney Theatre Center welcomes a diverse collection of users. The theater employs a full production crew to produce shows and actors to perform them while also hosting casts and crews for other productions visiting campus. The leadership, administration and other staff members work on site. Local patrons, regional theater buffs, and audience members traveling from afar all come together routinely throughout the year to see the work.
Diversity and inclusion are primary values of Olney Theatre Center. OTC believes that diversity and inclusion fuel great art. The variety of voices on campus and their access to influence each other allows the performing arts at Olney to transcend routine and predictable outcomes to produce meaningful and important vanguard art for their audience.Working closely with leadership, designers, and production staff, the master plan focused on how the theatre’s diverse community uses the campus. Olney is a place where artists, administrators, educators, production teams, students, and visitors all intersect. The plan emphasized that these user groups needed space not only to work, but to encounter each other—because at Olney, inclusion drives innovation. The master plan reinforced this value by recommending a network of “mixing chambers”—communal spaces positioned intentionally between buildings to foster exchange and spark creativity.
A diagram displaying shared interior spaces and their adjacent complementary outdoor gathering spaces.
Shared Spaces
A major strategic shift involved rethinking site circulation and breaking down the campus’s physical and cultural silos. Rather than isolating program pieces within the property, the plan promoted porosity, physically and socially, by moving key programs into more central, connected locations. This approach created a more cohesive campus that welcomes all users and encourages shared experiences across disciplines.
Additions & renovations from the 2019 Master Plan.
The plan also introduced new ideas about how the built environment could support the theatre’s evolving artistic ambitions. Instead of treating buildings as static containers for performance, the plan saw them as flexible backdrops—frameworks that should adapt to the creative vision of Olney’s artists. This meant thinking deeply about production needs, backstage workflows, and opportunities for behind-the-scenes spaces to become part of the audience experience, revealing the making of theatre as essential to its magic.
Ultimately, the 2019 Master Plan became the anchor for every project that followed. It articulated a shared vision between owner and architect, established principles of inclusivity and organic evolution, and laid the groundwork for a series of targeted interventions across the campus. Each subsequent project, from the reimagined Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab Lobby to Root Family Outdoor Stage and the reinvention of the original theatre, emerged directly from the values, insights, and trust built during this collaborative planning process.
1. The Theatre Lab
2. Original Theatre
3. Makers' Center - Production Area
4. Makers’ Center - Office Area
5. Education Wing
6. Artist Cottages
7. Restaurant / Artist Residences
