Sleepy Hollow at Olney Theatre Center

Olney audiences were blown away in 2025, when we invited Synetic Theater to perform their award-winning, wordless version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now they’re back, but this time they’re tackling a story with classic American roots in the intimate confines of Olney Theatre Center’s 150-seat Theatre Lab. In the haunted village of Sleepy Hollow, the past refuses to stay buried. Years after a brutal Revolutionary War encounter leaves a Hessian soldier beheaded and his beloved horse slain, the fallen rider returns as the legendary Headless Horseman—an apparition stalking the shadowed forests in search of what was taken from him. Inspired by Washington Irving’s classic tale, Sleepy Hollow reimagines the familiar legend as a haunting story of love, guilt, revenge, and redemption. Blending supernatural horror with theatrical spectacle, it asks whether the true monsters are the spirits who haunt us—or the deeds we would rather forget.