It began simply enough half a century ago. But the circumstances that inspired the creation of Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, California were hardly simple. Will Geer, best known as Grandpa Walton on The Waltons, had been blacklisted during the House Un-American Activities pursuit of communists. Without any secure means of working and earning an income, Geer created an outdoor theater where other blacklisted artists and singers could come together to perform.

He probably couldn’t foresee that his theater would still be thriving fifty years later. Nor could he have known that his daughter, Ellen Geer, would be the Producing Artistic Director when that golden anniversary came around. She has programmed an ambitious season that opened two weeks ago with a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which Geer has directed. One night later their ever-popular production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened.

This week a passion project of Geer’s opens, Queen Margaret’s Version of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses, which she compiled and directed. It takes Queen Margaret, the women and children from Henry VI Part I, II, III, and Richard III and puts them at the front of the story. The last production to open during this season is Terrence McNally‘s A Perfect Ganesh which opens July 15th.

Recently I spoke with Geer about the 50th anniversary, her father and mother’s legacy (her mother was Herta Ware – perhaps best known for her role in Cocoon), and what the future might hold for the truly independent theater that has beaten the odds and then some. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

I don’t know if you’re a particularly spiritual person, but I do know that both your parents’ ashes are scattered on the grounds at Theatricum Botanicum. Do you feel their presence with you as you launch season after season and, in particular, as you launch this golden anniversary? 

You know, they’re in your cells. Young people like to deny that. Maybe they get along with them well. But my parents are very deep, deep in my cells. And actually, Pappy would said, “I’m going to be good compost.”

A publicist once told me that when an actor does an interview for a project, it’s not about that job. It’s about getting the next job. What does this season tell us, not just about where Theatricum Botanicum is today, but also what its future might hold?

We just had a board meeting last night. That’s a big thing that we’re all talking about because it’s evolving. My daughter Willow has stepped forward like I can’t believe. She’s my Associate Producing Artistic Director and my nephews, who have been in Europe for years as musicians, now want to be more involved. Always in an in an organization like this it’s how you can make a living and yet do this hard thing. Because it is a hard thing to do theater like this where people don’t make a lot of money – unless you’re doing the big musicals and Broadway and all that. You have to have a deep passion to do to do this. So I see the future very, very clearly. My family still seems to be the core and we’re fourth generation on those boards. My granddaughter’s going to do the young Queen Elizabeth today in our history compilation. So that’s good.

I read a lovely interview you did with Steven Leigh Morris for American Theater magazine in 2016. You said, “You don’t teach by preaching. You teach by the way you live your life.” What stands out to you most about what you’ve learned from the way the people around you live their lives in the theater?

It’s a team. It’s working together and it’s alright if it’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sometimes when I’m thinking about a season, I’ll look at our actors and say, Oh God, that guy or that gal is ready for this. We always have casting calls, but when you have a company you begin to invest your care about them and it becomes part of your life. They become part of your life and you care about their next steps. You know, are they dating? I mean, all that’s a part of it. What happened to them during COVID? Oh, there’s something that’s going on with that person. How can we help? That’s all a part of living, isn’t it?

Also, whatever happens in any given day is going to be that intangible thing that finds its way somehow into a performance. You don’t know how it’s going to manifest itself, but it does find its way into a performance, doesn’t it? 

It does. Especially with young people. They haven’t lived in and had some of the hard knocks and the good knocks, been through a bunch of relationships that are great or they fail or jobs that are great or they fail. They haven’t been there yet. As you get older, I don’t know if it is with you, there’s a marvelous thing of sitting back and saying, oh, my God, that’s what’s happening to them. How can I help, you know?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the signature production at Theatricum Botanicum. What are the challenges of making the play not just fresh for your audiences, but also fresh for the company?

That is the play, if I pull it out of the season, everybody gets upset in the audience. That is the play where you bring in young performers out of college or out of high school because there are young, wonderful, vibrant parts and it’s magical. It’s the perfect learning place for an audience who’s never seen Shakespeare. For young people who are striving to encompass it within their acting realm, it’s just perfect.

Then, of course, you’ve always got young people as the fairies, so you can get your fairies from the community. And then the parents come. Those are the gifts that you get when you hang in there for a long time working on something.

There are a couple of lines in A Perfect Ganesh that I really love. One of the women prays to open her heart to India and she says, “Let me experience fully these people who are so different from me. Let me be part of this fabric, not to disappear into it, not to become them, but be with them.” How does Theatricum Botanicum allow you to let your heart expand?

Because you’re telling these incredible stories. When you’re an actor you suck in the character and whether they’re bad or whether they’re good or whether they’re ridiculous or it’s a comedy farce, doesn’t matter what they are. You have to become them in order to portray them and share them with this audience. That’s our job.

There’s a lot of conversation about having lived-in experiences to be able to play a character. I feel like that flies in the face of what good acting is. It doesn’t mean that you can relate fully to that person, but you can, at least for that period of time, enter that person’s shoes. Isn’t that what acting is? 

Oh, yeah. And it’s the imagination. If you’re playing a part where a woman has a baby and this person never had a baby, you do your research. You talk to people. That’s what acting is. The research part of it in the beginning is so exciting for actors.

There’s also conversation about what’s appropriate, what isn’t appropriate, what’s acceptable. There’s more and more censorship creeping its way into our civilization today. In your view, is theater in and of itself a political act? 

Isn’t life political? The only time I get upset is when the government starts using the word theater. They’re talking about war and everything else. We’re part of the politics of the world. In theater you’re telling the stories of what can happen, what might happen, what is happening here. And then, of course, you’ve got your other kind of theater, which is [she sings a vaudeville riff]. So it’s everybody feels good and it’s all okay. You can go home and have your ice cream and and that’s needed, too by human beings, you know. So these are the choices you make.

What was the inspiration for Queen Margaret? Because I feel like if we’re looking at a woman’s view of the War of the Roses, I can’t help but think that there is some kind of commentary on the role of women in history and the role of women today.

And the role of women in theater. These histories aren’t done and there’s some brilliant writing in them. Queen Margaret happens to be a person who goes through Henry VI Part One, Two, Three and Richard the Third. Then she says, Oh, you guys are stupid and I’m leaving. I’m going back to France. I always find that fascinating. She was a warrior. She was a mother. She was a lover. She was all these things.

Looking at those histories, I got excited about all the women because if somebody does one of these plays they very often cut the women’s parts. I start with Margaret voiceover and then Joan la Pucelle [Joan of Arc]. She was the first one. You’ve got the Duchess, you’ve got Queen Elizabeth, you’ve got Eleanor – wonderful women. And for the most part we do their scenes fully. It’s turned out to be almost a look at what happens when you have the elite of the world governing and deciding how they’re going to run a country. “The commoners. Go away. You’re bothering me. I want this. I want to get this.” It’s very like our government today.

Or like the way celebrities function in social media.

Or the top dogs. We’ve always had trouble with the upper class, lower class or lower lower class it. I haven’t got tons and tons of time left on this world. So all I can think of doing now is can we just blend? Can we see how wonderful every everybody is? All the different cultures and religions and be proud of them and blend? This power thing is very upsetting.

That’s one of the reasons I did this play and why that’s political to me is because when can people realize that we are continuing the same thing over and over and over again? When are we going to get to the point where we’re going to say, cut it out? Are we going to get to that point where we stop this? It’s tomfoolery, isn’t it?

I want to ask you something about your father. He was in the first season of the famous Phoenix Theater in New York. In 1954 he was in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull. You’ve got Montgomery Clift and Maureen Stapleton and countless other people. I realized there’s so much people don’t know about Will Geer beyond his television and film roles, beyond this theater that he co-founded. What is the one thing you wish people knew or understood more about who Will Geer was as a man and an artist? 

It’s what he gave to his family and the people around him: an endless exuberance, optimism about life. Especially watching him when he was crushed by HUAC. How he related to it. He related to it in a way of deep understanding of those people who were rats. That was quite something then because everybody took sides. We were totally wiped out as a family. I learned how to steal food because we didn’t have any. Papa grew most of the food that we ate. We had to kill chickens that we loved to eat.

To see how he went through that and still could encompass why human beings had to take that side. He understood the horrible politics of it, and he forgave where many people didn’t. Many people committed suicide. Many people had anger for the rest of their life. It affected them. It affected their family. It affected their work. But Pop, he was an optimist till the day he died.

Since I brought up The Seagull, I thought it would be only appropriate to end with asking you about something that Anton Chekhov is quoted as having said. “You should feel a flow of joy because you are alive. Your body will feel full of life. That is what you must give from the stage, your life no less. That is art to give all you have.” What have you gotten most from Theatricum Botanicum and what would you like the future to hold for the theater when you’re no longer able to be a part of it? 

We meet the best people in the world in theater. I’ve been in the secretarial world. I’ve had to sling hash. But there’s something about this here. You can create a community and that community gives to the bigger community. You can say this is a great part. You go for that part. You’re much brighter for that. For me, it creates an enlargement. We’re just little specks on this earth and the little time that we have we got to give to each other and serve. The rest is around us: the viciousness, greed, the power, bossing young people around and not letting them find themselves. So I hope that it goes on and that the community will still love it and it will go on passing on what these wonderful artists know to other people. That’s that’s what I hope.

To see the full interview with Ellen Geer, please go here.

Main Photo: Ellen Geer at Theatricum Botanicum (Photo by Lisa Adams/Courtesy Theatricum Botanicum)

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There are three shows that make up this year’s season. Two classic plays are paired with the world premiere of a new work.

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar started on Saturday and will run through October 30th. Ellen Geer and Willow Geer co-direct this production which is seen from the point-of-view of the Soothsayer (Gerald C. Rivers).

The company includes Willow Geer (Portia); Christopher W. Jones (Brutus); Mark Lewis (Julius Caesar); Melora Marshall (Cassius) and Michael McFall as Marc Anthony.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened on Sunday and will run through November 7th. Amongst the unique features of this production is that Ellen Geer has written original music that has been paired with some of Shakespeare’s text to be sung during the production. There is additional music by Marshall McDaniel.

Melora Marshall, who plays Titania, directs a company that includes Ethan Haslam (Demetrius); Julia Lisa (Hermia); Joey Major (Lysander); Sara Mountjoy-Pepka (Helena); Terrence Wayne Jr. (Puck) and Lisa Wolpe (Oberon).

Each of these two productions will be new productions that condense each play into 80 minute performance times with no intermission.

Having its world premiere will be The Last, Best Small Town written by John Guerra who used Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as the inspiration for his play. Performances begin July 31st and continue through November 7th.

The Last, Best Small Town is set in Fillmore and depicts the lives of two neighboring families. It’s a study of contrasts: one family is living the American dream while the other is struggling to make that dream a reality.

Christopher Wallinger and Christine Breihan portray Hank and Willow Miller. They have one daughter, Maya (Jordan Tyler Kessler). Richard Azurdia and Jeanette Godoy play Benny and Della Gonzalez. Their son, Elliot (Kelvin Morales), is succeeding in ways that the Gonzalez’s have always dreamed of. But Benny’s alcoholic father (Miguel Pérez) is complicating things for the family.

What will Maya and Elliot be able to do in a world where it is possible theirs will be the first generation to do less-well than their parents?

Ellen Geer directs.

Tickets for Julius Caesar can be purchased here. Tickets for A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be purchased here. Tickets for The Last, Best Small Town can be purchased here.

Photo: Gerald C. Rivers, Mark Lewis, Frac Ross and Christopher W. Jones in Julius Caesar (Photo by Ian Flanders/Courtesy Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum)

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Our top pick, previewed yesterday, is a reading of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart on Saturday. We also have some great jazz music for you (both traditional vocals and a very contemporary performance), a London production of Chekhov that earned rave reviews, a tribute to two of Broadway’s best songwriters, chamber music and a contortionist. After all, it’s Mother’s Day weekend. Don’t all mothers just love contortionists?

Here are the Top 10 Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th

*TOP PICK* PLAY READING: The Normal Heart – ONE Archives Foundation – May 8th – 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT

We previewed this event yesterday as out Top Pick, but here are the pertinent details:

Director Paris Barclay has assembled Sterling K. Brown, Laverne Cox, Jeremy Pope, Vincent Rodriguez III, Guillermo Díaz, Jake Borelli, Ryan O’Connell, Daniel Newman, Jay Hayden and Danielle Savre for a virtual reading of Larry Kramer’s play.

The reading will be introduced by Martin Sheen.

There will be just this one live performance of The Normal Heart. It will not be available for viewing afterwards. There will be a Q&A with the cast and Barclay following the reading. Tickets begin at $10 for students, $20 for general admission.

PLAY READING: Rachel – Roundabout Theatre Company’s Refocus Project – Now – May 7th

Angelina Weld Grimké’s 1916 play Rachel, is the second play in the Refocus Project from Roundabout Theatre Company. Their project puts emphasis on plays by Black playwrights from the 20th century that didn’t get enough attention or faded into footnotes of history in an effort to bring greater awareness to these works.

Rachel tells the story of a Black woman who, upon learning some long-ago buried secrets about her family, has to rethink being a Black parent and bringing children into the world.

Miranda Haymon directs Sekai Abení, Alexander Bello, E. Faye Butler, Stephanie Everett, Paige Gilbert, Brandon Gill, Toney Goins, Abigail Jean-Baptiste and Zani Jones Mbayise.

The reading is free, but registration is required.

JAZZ: Joel Ross & Immanuel Wilkins – Village Vanguard – May 7th – May 9th

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more compelling pairing of jazz musicians than vibraphonist Joel Ross and alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

The two have been collaborating for quite some time. Wilkins is a member of Ross’ Good Vibes quintet.

Nate Chinen, in a report for NPR, described a 2018 concert in which Ross performed with drummer Makaya McCraven this way. “Ross took one solo that provoked the sort of raucous hollers you’d sooner expect in a basketball arena. Again, this was a vibraphone solo.“

Wilkins album, Omega, was declared the Best Jazz Album of 2020 by Giovanni Russonello of the New York Times.

I spoke to Wilkins last year about the album and his music. You can read that interview here. And if you’re a fan, Jason Moran, who produced the album, told me that this music was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Tickets for this concert are $10.

PLAY: Uncle Vanya – PBS Great Performances – May 7th check local listings

Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is performed by a cast headed by Richard Armitrage and Toby Jones. Conor McPherson adapted the play for this production which played at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London and was directed by Ian Rickson.

Arifa Akbar, writing in her five-star review for The Guardian, said of the production:

“Ian Rickson’s exquisite production is full of energy despite the play’s prevailing ennui. It does not radically reinvent or revolutionise Chekov’s 19th-century story. It returns us to the great, mournful spirit of Chekhov’s tale about unrequited love, ageing and disappointment in middle-age, while giving it a sleeker, modern beat.

“McPherson’s script has a stripped, vivid simplicity which quickens the pace of the drama, and despite its contemporary language – Vanya swears and uses such terms as “wanging on” – it does not grate or take away from the melancholic poetry.”

CHAMBER MUSIC: Beyond the Horizon – LA Chamber Orchestra – Premieres May 7th – 9:30 PM ET/6:30 PM PT

This is the 12th episode in LACO’s Close Quarters series and definitely one of its most intriguing. Jessie Montgomery, the composer who curated the previous episode, curates this episode as well. She is joined by her fellow alums from Juilliard, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (who directs) and music producer Nadia Sirota.

The program features Alvin Singleton’s Be Natural (a pun any music major will understand); Mazz Swift’s The End of All That Is Holy, The Beginning of All That is Good and Montgomery’s Break Away.

The performance portion of Beyond the Horizon is conducted by Christopher Rountree of Wild Up! Visual artist Yee Eun Nam contributes to the film as does art director James Darrah.

There is no charge to watch Beyond the Horizon.

CHAMBER MUSIC: MusiKaravan: A Classical Road Trip with Delerium Musicum – The Wallis Sorting Room Sessions – May 7th – May 9th

Music by Johannes Brahms, Charlie Chaplin, Frederic Chopin, Vittorio Monti, Sergei Prokofiev, Giacomo Puccini and Dmitri Shostakovich will be performed by Delerium Musicum founding violinists Étienne Gara and YuEun Kim. They will be joined for two pieces by bassist Ryan Baird.

The full ensemble of musicians that make up Delerium Musicum will join for one of these pieces? Which one will it be? There is only one way to find out.

This concert is part of The Sorting Room Sessions at The Wallis.

Tickets are $20 and will allow for streaming for 48 hours

MOTHER’S DAY OFFERINGS: MOMentum Place and A Catalina Tribute to Mothers – May 8th

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is celebrating Mother’s Day with MOMentum Place, a show featuring aerial artists, circus performers, dancers and musicians. The line-up includes circus artist Elena Brocade; contortionist and acrobat Georgia Bryan, aerialist and stilt dancer Jena Carpenter of Dream World Cirque, ventriloquist Karl Herlinger, hand balancer Tyler Jacobson, stilt walker and acrobat Aaron Lyon, aerialist Kate Minwegen, cyr wheeler Sarah Moser and Cirque du Soleil alum Eric Newton, plus Dance Dimensions Kids and Focus Fish Kids. The show was curated by aerlist/dancer Lexi Pearl. Tickets are $35.

Catalina Jazz Club is holding A Catalina Tribute to Mothers at 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT. Headlining the concert are singers Jack Jones, Freda Payne and Tierney Sutton. Vocalist Barbara Morrison is a special guest. Also performing are  Kristina Aglinz, Suren Arustamyan, Lynne Fiddmont, Andy Langham, Annie Reiner, Dayren Santamaria, Tyrone Mr. Superfantastic and more. Dave Damiani is the host. The show is free, however donations to help keep the doors open at Catalina Jazz Club are welcomed and encouraged.

JAZZ: Love in Exile – The Phillips Collection – May 9th – 4:00 PM ET/1:00 PM PT

There is no set program for this performance by pianist/composer Vijay Iyer, vocalist Arooj Aftab and bassist Shazad Ismaily. The website says Love in Exile performs as one continuous hour-long set.

Having long been a fan of Iyer, spending an hour wherever he and his fellow musicians wants to go sounds like pure heaven to me.

Iyer’s most recent album, Uneasy, was released in April on ECM Records and finds him performing with double bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. It’s a great album. You should definitely check it out.

There is no charge to watch this concert, but registration is required. Once Love in Exile debuts, you’ll have 7 days to watch the performance as often as you’d like.

DANCE: Past, Present, Future – ALL ARTS – May 9th – May 11th

ALL ARTS, part of New York’s PBS stations, is holding an three-night on-line dance festival beginning on Sunday.

If We Were a Love Song is first up at 8:00 PM ET on Sunday. Nina Simone’s music accompanies this work conceived by choreographer Kyle Abraham who is collaborating with filmmaker Dehanza Rogers.

Dancers (Slightly Out of Shape) airs on Monday at 8:00 PM ET. This is part documentary/part dance featuring choreographer Pam Tanowitz as she and her company resume rehearsals last year during the Covid crisis. It leads to excerpts from Every Moment Alters which is set to the music of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw.

One + One Make Three closes out the festival on Tuesday at 8:00 PM ET. This film showcases the work of Kinetic Light, an ensemble featuring disabled performers. This is also part documentary/part dance made by director Katherine Helen Fisher.

All three films will be accompanied by ASL and Open Captions for the hearing impaired.

BROADWAY: Broadway Close Up: Kander and Ebb – Kaufman Music Center – May 10th – 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT

You know the work of John Kander and Fred Ebb: Cabaret, Chicago, Flora the Red Menace, Kiss of the Spider Woman, New York New York, The Scottsboro Boys and Woman of the Year.

Their work will be explored, discussed and performed with host Sean Hartley.

He’s joined by Tony Award-winner Karen Ziemba (Contact) who appeared in two musicals by the duo: Curtains and Steel Pier. The latter was written specifically for her.

Any fan of Kander and Ebb will want to purchase a ticket for this show. Tickets are $15

Those are our Top Ten Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th (even if we cheated a little bit by having two options listed together). But there are a few reminders:

The Metropolitan Opera has their own view of mothers with their theme of Happy Mother’s Day featuring Berg’s Wozzeck on Friday; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on Saturday and Handel’s Agrippina on Sunday.

Puccini returns for the start of National Council Auditions Alumni Week with a 1981-1982 season production of La Bohème. We’ll have all the details for you on Monday.

LA Opera’s Signature Recital Series continues with the addition of a recital by the brilliant soprano Christine Goerke.

One rumor to pass along to you: word has it Alan Cumming will be Jim Caruso’s guest on Monday’s Pajama Cast Party.

That completes all our selections of Best Bets: May 7th – May 10th. I hope all of you who are mothers have a terrific weekend. For those of you celebrating with your moms, I hope we’ve given you plenty of options to consider.

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the culture!

Photo: Larry Kramer (Photo by David Shankbone/Courtesy David Shankbone)

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Cross-dressing, mistaken identities and mismatched lovers are part of the story here. Viola and her brother Sebastian are shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria. She fears her bother has died and dresses as a man to find out what’s happened. Though disguised as a man, she becomes enamored with Duke Orsino, but he’s in love with Lady Olivia who loves Viola, unaware that she isn’t really a man.

The cast for Twelfth Night includes Willow Geer as Viola, Christine Breihan as Olivia, Christopher W. Jones as Sir Toby Belch, Max Lawrence as Duke Orsino, Melora Marshall as Malvolio, Sean McConaghy as Antonio, Cavin Mohrhardt as Sebastian, Elizabeth Tobias as Maria, Frank Weidner as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Time Winters as Feste.

Ellen Geer directs Twelfth Night. Marshall McDaniel sets some of Shakespeare’s beautiful text to music. Costume design for is by Amy Mazzaferro, lighting design is by Zach Moore and props are by Leah Haynor.

Theatricum Botanicum is an outdoor venue, so dressing appropriately is always a good idea. You might also want to bring cushions for the seating. There is plenty of space to have a picnic prior to each performance.

Twelfth Night will be performed in repertory with A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Moby Dick-Rehearsed, An Enemy of the People, The Skin of Our Teeth and The Gin Game. To check out the full schedule for the summer season go here.

For tickets go here.

Photo: Christopher W. Jones and Elizabeth Tobias in Twelfth Night/Photo by Ian Flanders

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Written by Miller as a allegory for the McCarthy hearings into Communist activities in the United States, The Crucible is set in Salem, Mass and looks into whether or not three girls who seem bewitched are right in claiming so many in their community are truly witches. And if so, what should happen to them. In other words, since the term “witch hunt” is getting regularly used these days, this truly depicts just that.

Ellen Geer, Will’s daughter (he of The Waltons), directs this production. Theatricum Botanicum is in Topanga and is an outdoor theatre. Some food and drink is available for sale at the venue or you can also picnic in advance of the show.

Other plays being performed as part of this summer’s season include Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Enig Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden, William Dubois’ Haiti, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Photo by Ian Flanders

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