Venue: Olney Theatre Center
Town: Olney, US

Located in Olney, Maryland, the Olney Theatre Center is one of the two official state theaters of Maryland. Olney Theatre Center is situated on 14 acres (57,000 m2) in the middle of the Washington-Baltimore-Frederick "triangle." There are three indoor venues: the Historic Theatre, the Roberts Mainstage, and the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab. There is also an outdoor venue, the Root Family Stage at Omi's Pavilion. The Roberts Mainstage seats 429 patrons, with a small theatre lab added in 1999. As of November 2023, Olney Theatre Center has won 28 Helen Hayes Awards since the award's founding in 1985 and received 208 nominations. It is one of only two theaters in the country to operate under an Actors' Equity Association Council of Stock Theaters (COST) contract. In 1938, Olney Theatre was founded as a summer theater and restaurant by Stephen E. Cochran, attorney and judge Harold C. Smith, and theater manager Leonard B. McLaughlin. Olney Theatre was built on the Woodlawn Lodge estate, which was the site of a former roller skating rink in what was then rural Montgomery County. Olney Theatre is situated on unceded land that is the ancestral home of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe. Stephen Cochran was the first managing director and actress Ethel Barrymore was the first associate director. The National Academy of Stage Training, a professional school of drama that had been founded by Cochran in 1932, moved to the Olney Theatre and began its first summer course there on June 20, 1938. The class was taught by Dorothy Martin and George Vivian. Olney Theatre's first production, The Lady Has a Heart, had its first performance on July 25, 1938. The play was about a butler who was elected to the parliament of Hungary on a modified New Deal platform. The first show was sold out. Elissa Landi and Leslie Denison starred, along with Gordon Richards, Howard Ferguson, and Zoyla Talma. Olney Theatre had a rustic feel, with inverted peach baskets serving as chandeliers and an open-air lobby wi