Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at Olney Theatre Center for the Arts
The Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab reimagines and expands an existing performance facility on Olney Theatre Center’s historic campus, transforming it into a more flexible, inclusive, and technically capable environment for creating and experiencing new work. Through a renovation and thoughtfully integrated addition, the project strengthens connections between rehearsal, performance, and outdoor gathering spaces—supporting artists, learners, and audiences as they experiment, collaborate, and engage with the surrounding landscape.
The Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab advances the goals established in the 2019 Master Plan, a comprehensive effort to reimagine and reinvigorate the historic campus.
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Situated in a rural area of the northeast, but within striking distance of several large metropolitan areas, the theatre lab seeks to fulfill two seemingly divergent, but intertwined missions: an opportunity to immerse oneself in the rural splendor of nature, “away from it all,” while simultaneously offering world-class avant-garde experimental theatre usually only found in urban city centers. In design, the team looked to uphold this sentiment, organizing the building to take full advantage of the surrounding natural beauty—maximizing relationships between indoor and outdoor use, while also imbuing the project with a sense of the mystical.
The shaped roof and expansive glazing of the new addition provides a distinctive and recognizable entrance that blends seamlessly into the existing campus architecture. The user experience extends into the lobby where the expressive ceilings replicate the exterior building form. The immediate lobby is a warm, wood-designed space, with adjoining access to the outdoors during intermission or after performances. As guests transition into the black-box theatre their journey is denoted by a liminal area: a blue glowing threshold signaling the start of the performance and entry into the unknown.
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.
