In Topanga Canyon, A Historic Outdoor Theater — Once A Refuge For Blacklisted Actors — Turns 50

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."