Melora Marshall

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum will open its 2024 summer repertory season with two productions by the Bard. Learn how to purchase tickets.

Ellen Geer’s new compilation of Shakespeare's best-known history plays does nothing to address the misogynistic, xenophobic views that have led to Margaret of Anjou’s historical presentation (or any other woman’s) as a stereotypical villain. But in other ways, it succeeds in illuminating Margaret as what she actually was - a force to be reckoned with.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum continues its 50th anniversary repertory season with A Perfect Ganesh, the magical, poetic, Pulitzer Prize nominated play by Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally. Mary Jo DuPrey directs for a Saturday, July 15 opening on Theatricum’s beautiful outdoor stage in Topanga, where performances continue through October 7.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum will continue its 50th Anniversary Summer Season with Queen Margaret’s Version of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses, a new edit of Shakespeare’s best-known history plays — Henry VI Parts I, II and III and Richard III — compiled by artistic director Ellen Geer.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum will open its 50th Anniversary Summer Season with two of William Shakespeare’s most mystical offerings: the thrilling supernatural tragedy, Macbeth, and that most magical of romantic comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum will celebrate its 50th Anniversary in high style with a summer-long season of theater, music, performance and other festivities at its spectacular, one-of-a-kind outdoor venue in Topanga.

Dear Margaret Sanger, a new musical in development exploring the history of birth control and women’s continued struggle for reproductive freedom, will receive two staged readings in a fundraising event for Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum.

Will Geer’s Theatricum presents the world premiere of the “all new” revival of Oscar-winning playwright Ernest Thompson’s The West Side Waltz beginning June 25, 2022. Mary Jo DuPrey directs the cast of Ellen Geer, Melora Marshall, Willow Geer, Miguel Pérez and Charles Lin. I was most fortunate to have the playwright make some time to answer my queries.

Forty-one years after its premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre, Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum will present the world premiere of an “all new” revival of The West Side Waltz by Academy Award-winning writer Ernest Thompson (On Golden Pond).

Fans of Shakespeare, alfresco theater, old time rock’n roll and just plain fun— pack a picnic and head up to the spectacular, one-of-a-kind outdoor venue at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, where the 2022 repertory season, sponsored by the S. Mark Taper Foundation, opens with two buoyant comedies.

Summer is on the horizon, and Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum is ready to announce a mix of classical theater, new work and music set to take place at its spectacular, one-of-a-kind outdoor amphitheatre in Topanga.

Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum presents Under the Oaks, four evenings of performance and song on Theatricum's spectacular outdoor stage in Topanga.

'A lean an hungry look,' Julius Caesar’s oft-quoted descriptor for Cassius, is an apt metaphor for the season-opening production of JULIUS CAESAR at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, and not always in a good way. The leanness box is dutifully checked, but director Ellen Geer’s production could certainly be hungrier and more thought out.

Two beloved plays by William Shakespeare are set to welcome audiences back to the spectacular outdoor venue at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum this summer.

William Shakespeare's rollicking and ever-popular comedy of mistaken identity, TWELFTH NIGHT, brings its magical combination of mischief, madness and romance into the outdoor amphitheater at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum this summer where it plays in rep through September 28. Written in 1601 and first seen in the Inns of Court shortly after Christmas (hence, the title), the holiday was celebrated as a festival during which everything was made delightfully topsy-turvy, much like the world of the play's Illyria. And you could not ask for a more ideal cast of characters to bring The Bard's non-stop, high energy hijinks to life.

I am a huge fan of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. It is literary genius in its storytelling of the lifespan of two families in Grovers Corners, New Hampshire It's almost as if Wilder turned Our Town upside down, shook it a few times in snowglobe fashion and created The Skin of Our Teeth. It's also a family drama but it covers more than one lifespan, as it combs a five thousand year period from the Ice Age to the 20th century in Excelsior and Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Antrobus family is bound throughout: the father (Mark Lewis), the mother (Melora Marshall) and their two children Gladys (Gabrielle Beauvais) and Henry (William Holbrook) and their maid Sabina (Willow Geer). Their lives change through time, and plotwise, there is always a crisis they are exposed to. What is mos effective to witness is how they manage to pull through each obstacle...and survive.

The Skin of Our Teeth — The story of humankind told through the lives of the Antrobus family. Set in 20th century New Jersey and the Ice Age, Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a whirlwind of modernity and antiquity.

The Skin of Our Teeth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning tribute to the indestructibility of the human race by Thornton Wilder, opens on the beautiful outdoor stage at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum on Saturday,July 13, where performances continue through Sept. 29. 

Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum continues its mission to resist and struggle against the forces of inequality and injustice by presenting socially conscious classics that speak to today. A new version of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, freely adapted by artistic director Ellen Geer and co-directed by Geer and Melora Marshall, joins Theatricum's 2019 summer repertory season beginning Saturday, June 22.

Actor Will Holbrook made a big splash as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet when he first arrived in Los Angeles in 2016 at the Archway Theatre Co. The grandson of Hal Holbrook, Will is ambitious with two plays scheduled to perform this summer and the presentation of his new production company dedicated to film. In our conversation, Will talks with candor and enthusiasm about his plans for this summer and beyond.