We get asked this question a lot.
“Aren’t you a dinner theatre?”
No.
“But you used to be a dinner theatre?”
No.
“Are you sure? I could swear I went to a dinner theatre in Olney.”
We promise. It wasn’t Olney Theatre Center.
There was a time in the 1940s when you could have dinner with the actors in Crawford House, prior to a performance, but that was a fairly short-lived program, and it never billed itself or operated as a dinner theatre. If you actually attended one of those evenings, we'd love to hear from you.
This confusion may stem from a couple of sources. The first, and most obvious is the proximity of Olney Theatre Center to the Olney Ale House – and while we’ve both been on opposite corners of Doctor Bird Road and Olney-Sandy Spring Road for a very long time, we’ve been separate entities all the way through.
Another source of confusion is that there were at least two area dinner theatres in Montgomery County for quite some time. The oldest of these was the Burn Brae Dinner Theatre in Burtonsville, which operated from 1968-2001. The other was Damascus Dinner Theatre which began in 1985 and today is the Damascus Theatre Company, a non-dinner-serving community theatre.
There are two dinner theatres that do still operate in our general area: Toby’s in Columbia, MD, and, during the summer, Montgomery College Theatre. But while you can enjoy your dinner at Olney Theatre on Omi’s Pavilion before a show on the Root Family Stage or in the Roberts Mainstage, you’ll have to bring it with you (we recommend one of our great local restaurants or from one of the food trucks that we occasionally host).
