The Brief

Deep in the Santa Monica Mountains and hidden off a main road in Topanga Canyon, a little piece of L.A. history awaits. It's the Theatricum Botanicum, a storied outdoor theater that turns 50-years-old this season.

Along the way to this major birthday, the theater has provided refuge for Hollywood actors during the McCarthy era, served as a temporary home to folk singer Woody Guthrie, and staged countless productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

This year is no exception — audiences can see Shakespeare's romp through the fairy world as well as his classic Macbeth, Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh and a Shakespeare compilation "Queen Margaret's Version" all summer long.

But even the Shakespeare-averse can find delight in the Theatricum Botanicum's setting.

A painted cursive sign on the road marks the theater's entrance. Within, a garden and burbling fountain give way to a curving path. Then there's the wooden stage — carved into the hillside with trees towering overhead.

"Once you come one time, you're gonna want to come back because it's a magical place right off the coast of [the] Pacific Coast Highway," said actor Earnestine Phillips, who has been performing at the Theatricum Botanicum for more than two decades. "You come up into this beautiful canyon and you go, 'Wow, this is fairytale land up here.'"

A Midsummer Night’s Dream being performed at Theatricum Botanicum.

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A family business

The Theatricum is a family affair, started by actor Will Geer in the late 1950s and now led by his daughter Ellen, who took over the theater when he died in 1978. Since then, Ellen Geer has steered the theater from a community space into a professional playhouse with classes for adults and school children year-round.

"I wanted it to be a place… for artists to do their work, and educators," Ellen Geer said in a recent interview. "A lot of people, they come through us and then they always come back and say, 'This is my home.'"

An actor performs in the audience at Theatricum Botanicum.

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Actors onstage perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatricum Botanicum.

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Brian Feinzimer

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Musicians perform hidden from view onstage during a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatricum Botanicum.

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Brian Feinzimer

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The family tree doesn't stop there. Ellen's daughter Willow, sister Melora Marshall, and even some grandchildren are all performing in this summer's shows.

Willow Geer's first performance on the Theatricum's stage was in utero, when her mom played Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She's only missed one summer season since — and now has kids of her own who are growing up at the theater.

"Having a place to do your art the way you wanna do it, working with kids, being able to be in charge of your own times, you can be around your family, and [create] a space for people to express themselves and find home and community," Willow said, talking about the theater her mother has built. "And that's really been her passion."

The Hollywood Blacklist

The women of the Theatricum Botanicum have always been a driving force for the theater. According to the family, it was Will Geer's wife, the actor Herta Ware, who first found the property in Topanga where the theater now sits.

Will Geer and Herta Ware in costume for a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

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The Theatricum Botanicum company poses in 1973.

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During the McCarthy Era in the late 1950s, Will Geer had been blacklisted by Hollywood for his political beliefs. So the family packed up their home in Santa Monica and moved to the mountains, where they took up horticulture and performed free Shakespeare with other blacklisted artists.

"We sold vegetables and herbs and all that sort of stuff on the road," Ellen Geer said. "And they created together a place for blacklisted artists to work. To sing their songs. To do their plays."

It was around this time that folk legends like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie would perform at the property. Guthrie even lived in a cabin there for a time.

The theater was founded in earnest in 1973, after Will Geer's career as an actor had revived due to his role as Grandpa Zeb in the popular TV show The Waltons.

"A lot of the actors who had gone through the blacklist…gravitated towards here because they knew it was going to be authentic," Marshall said. "They knew it was going to be a real theater experience, not for the purpose of getting them a TV job, but for classical theater."

A community of actors

It's this tradition and the theater's commitment to social justice that keeps Theatricum's actors coming back every summer.

"I've been [here] a long time because right away I could sense the inclusion," Earnestine Phillips said. "[Ellen Geer has] always really made a point of diversifying her theater because the Geers always fought for equal rights."

Emoria Weidner has been performing at the theater for more than a decade. This summer, they're performing in "Queen Margaret’s Version of Shakespeare’s" Wars of the Roses, Ellen Geer's compilation of Shakespeare's history plays told through the queen's perspective.

Theatre goers sit in the garden at Theatricum Botanicum.

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Kids play in the gardens at Theatricum Botanicum.

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Brian Feinzimer

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Theatre goers enjoy a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatricum Botanicum.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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"There's a great deal of trust and camaraderie around it," Weidner said. "So when we are putting together, I don't know, say a gigantic war epic that's actually four Shakespeare plays crushed into one, we trust that everybody else on the stage has our back and we have theirs."

The Theatricum Botanicum will be open into the fall, with performances every weekend.

"A lot of people kind of meet here from their various jobs and responsibilities and they see a play," Marshall said. "There's absolutely nothing like sitting up in that audience on a summer evening with the owls hooting and the crickets, and watching a play come to life right before your eyes."

Michael Gates, a former deputy assistant attorney general, produced a letter Friday that he said confirmed he was not fired for cause, but rather resigned from the Civil Rights Division of the federal Department of Justice.

The Orange County Register last week reported that Gates had been fired for cause, citing an anonymous DOJ source who said Gates repeatedly referred to women colleagues by derogatory and demeaning names and had complained about the department employing a pregnant woman. The Register also published a government employment form, which was undated, that they said showed that Gates was fired for cause.

Gates told LAist the allegations were “100% fabrication.” Then on Friday, he shared a screenshot of a Nov. 21 letter from John Buchko, director of operational management at the DOJ, stating that the department “has accepted your voluntary resignation” and “will remove from your personnel record any previous reference to your termination.”

LAist reached out to Natalie Baldassarre, a DOJ spokesperson, to confirm the letter, sharing that screenshot. She responded by email: “No comment on personnel matters.”

Michael Gates provided this letter. A spokesperson for the department said they would not comment on personnel matters.

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Back to Huntington Beach

Gates told LAist earlier this month that he was resigning from his job with the federal government because he missed Huntington Beach and his family. On Friday, the Huntington Beach City Council confirmed Gates has been hired back as chief assistant city attorney. He starts Monday.

Gates is both loved and loathed in politically contentious Huntington Beach. He has been an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his policies and a continuous thorn in the side of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is one of the most prominent critics of the president.

Gates was first elected city attorney in 2014 and has won re-election twice since then, with wide margins. Huntington Beach is among a minority of cities in California that elects rather than appoints a city attorney.

Gates' track record

As city attorney, Gates sued the state over housing mandates and the right to implement voter ID. He also marshalled the city into the center of culture war battles. While he was city attorney, his office sued California over the state’s sanctuary law, as well as a law prohibiting schools from requiring teachers to inform parents of a child’s request to change pronouns or otherwise “out” them as LGBTQ.

Many Huntington Beach residents support his work. But Gates has also faced heavy criticism and legal penalties, for some of his actions. In 2021, the city paid out $2.5 million total in a settlement with one former and one current employee who alleged age discrimination while working at the city under Gates. The city did not concede to any wrongdoing under the settlement.

And last year, Gates helped broker a controversial settlement over the pandemic-era cancelation of the city’s annual airshow, which will cost Huntington Beach taxpayers millions over the coming years.

What’s next?

Gates told LAist he’s looking forward to, once again, heading up the city’s litigation, including a scheduled trial against an effort to force Huntington Beach to adopt by-district elections. He said he plans to run again for city attorney in next year’s election.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who rose to prominence as one of President Donald Trump's biggest defenders and recently became one of his biggest critics, is leaving Congress.

Greene's announcement late Friday that she would resign effective Jan. 5, 2026, is the latest escalation of months of clashes with the president over his second term agenda — including the release of the Epstein files.

"Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for," Greene wrote in a lengthy statement shared online.

The third-term Congresswoman also said it would not be fair to her northwest Georgia district, one of the most conservative in the country, to have them "endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president we all fought for," while noting that "Republicans will likely lose the midterms."

Greene is one of a record 40 House members and 10 senators who have indicated they do not plan to return to their seats after the 2026 election, joining a number of lawmakers who are retiring or running for a different office.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman filed a motion Friday in Superior Court to dismiss manslaughter charges against two Torrance police officers who fatally shot a Black man in possession of an air rifle in 2018.

Hochman argued in court documents that prosecutors can’t meet the legal standard of proof needed for the officers to be convicted of a crime.

The court has not yet ruled on the matter.

The details

Officers Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez were indicted in 2023 in connection with the killing of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, 23, who was suspected of stealing a car.

As the officers approached the car, they saw what was later revealed to be an air rifle between Mitchell’s legs. When Mitchell appeared to reach for the rifle,the officers opened fire, according to police.

The backstory

Former District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to file charges against the officers in 2019, saying they reasonably believed Mitchell had a gun. Her successor George Gascón, elected in 2020 on a platform of police accountability, assigned a special prosecutor to review the case. The special prosecutor sought the criminal indictment.

When Hochman took office in 2024, he appointed a new special prosecutor, who recommended the charges be dropped.

“We cannot move forward in good faith with prosecuting these two officers because we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt with admissible evidence that the officers unreasonably believed they were in imminent danger when they saw what looked like a sawed-off shotgun or rifle between Mr. Mitchell’s legs and his hands moved toward the weapon just before the officers shot,” the statement read.

The courts

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta did not immediately make a ruling Friday on the motion to dismiss the charges, saying the state Supreme Court is also considering the case.

The state Supreme Court is considering an appeal filed by one of the officer’s attorneys after Ohta rejected an earlier motion to dismiss by the defense.

As the Palisades Fire was still burning in January, residents saw an eye-grabbing headline: the Santa Ynez reservoir, perched directly above the Palisades, was offline for repairs and empty.

The reservoir’s closure frustrated residents and spurred Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a state investigation into whether the reservoir being full of water would have made a difference fighting the deadly fire.

After months of analysis, California agencies including the state’s EPA, Cal Fire and the Department of Water Resources issued a report confirming the explanations given by local officials and experts in the aftermath of the fire: the water supply was too slow, not too low — and even a functioning reservoir likely wouldn’t have done much in the face of an unprecedented natural disaster.

Why the hydrants stopped working

The report found that not even a full reservoir positioned uphill from the Palisades Fire could have maintained water pressure and stopped the devastation.

“The water system lost pressure, not due to a lack of water supply in the system, but because of an insufficient flow rate,” the report states.

A reservoir perched at a high elevation, such as the Santa Ynez, can serve an important role in maintaining water pressure for hydrants throughout the system. As water gets used downhill, water from the reservoir flows to towers that maintain water pressure. Because of gravity and physical limitations on flow rates, the pressure towers can't be refilled at the same pace as they are drained and eventually dry up.

In the case of the Palisades Fire, the report states, a full reservoir would have helped keep water pressure up for only a short time.

The report noted that some data points on the demand on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s system were missing.

However, investigators found that based on experiences with other fires, the high demand across the system meant it was “unlikely that [the reservoir] could have helped maintain pressure for very long.”

The system’s design

The report found that the closure of the Santa Ynez Reservoir was in line with the primary purpose of L.A.’s water infrastructure: maintaining a clean drinking water supply. The reservoir repairs were prompted by a damaged cover. The repairs, the report notes, were required by federal and state laws on drinking water safety.

More broadly, municipal water systems like L.A.’s weren’t built to fight wildfires, as LAist reported in January.

“This report confirms what we and others have been saying more broadly regarding water system expectations and capabilities, but does so completely independently and with new details specific to the L.A. fires,” Greg Pierce, the director of UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, said in an email to LAist.

What’s next

The report makes two major recommendations: continue to follow the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, and make sure firefighters in the state are positioned for year-round fires.

The state stopped short of recommending any changes to L.A.’s municipal infrastructure. Water experts like Pierce say massive amounts of water and a very expensive redesign of L.A.’s water system would be needed to keep fire hydrants working during large urban conflagrations.

For their part, researchers and others have been looking into other solutions, including putting more utility lines underground and redistributing water across the system.

The report about the reservoir comes on the heels of a separate report from the Fire Safety Research Institute about the timeline leading up to and during the January firestorm. That report, which was commissioned by the California governor's office, contains a detailed account of the Palisades and Eaton fires' progressions and emergency services' responses on Jan. 7 and 8.

As for the Santa Ynez Reservoir, the repairs to fix its broken cover and make it usable again are slated to begin in June and finish by May 2027.