TOPANGA, CALIF.: Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum has announced its 2020 summer repertory season, featuring five concurrent outdoor productions running through Sept. 27 as well as four special mainstage events.
The season will open with three plays by Shakespeare. First up is Julius Caesar (June 6-Sept. 27), the tragedy about Caesar’s tyrannical rule in Rome and his assassination, which divides the city.
Next will be the return of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (June 7-Sept. 27), a comedy about unrequited love and mistaken identities in a magical forest. The theatre will offer a variation on its annual staging of the play, this time including additional music and songs.
Following will be another comedy from the Bard, The Merry Wives of Windsor (June 13-Sept. 27). This production will be set in small-town America in the 1950s, with the opportunistic John Falstaff coming into town on a motorcycle.
The season will continue with Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer-winning ’night, Mother (June 20-Sept. 27). Featuring real-life mother and daughter Ellen and Willow Geer, the play follows the desperation inside the Cates household after Jessie announces to her mother that she plans to kill herself before the end of the evening.
The season will conclude with the world premiere of The Last, Best Small Town (July 11-Sept 27) by John Guerra. Set immediately following the financial crisis, Guerra’s play looks at two neighboring families, one Latinx and one white, as the children in the families deal with coming of age and finding their place in a changed world.
This season’s slate of special events includes Momentum Place (May 10), a show consisting of modern dance, aerial acts, juggling, and performance art curated by Lexi Pearl; the annual Family Barn Dance (July 4); the biannual mounting of The Woody Guthrie Show (Oct. 3), a tribute to the songwriter, folklorist, and labor leader, who was a friend of the organization’s namesake; and a concert by singer/songwriter Inara George in October on a date to be announced at a later time.
Additional summer programming includes evenings of music and performance, comedy improv, interactive theatre for families, and the annual Halloween celebration “BOO-tanicum.”
Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, founded in 1973, is an outdoor summer theatre that aims to present classics and socially relevant plays.
