THE SEAGULL: MALIBU Premiere and More Set for Theatricum Botanicum 2025 Season

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum has revealed its 52nd annual season of theater, music and performance: the “2025 Season of Resilience.” 

“This season is about endurance,” says Theatricum associate artistic director Willow Geer. “Theatricum carries on following the California wildfires that touched our doorstep and brought devastation and loss to so many. Each of the plays is about coming to grips, rising above, and moving forward, portraying human resilience and resonating deeply in this strange new world we find ourselves living in.”

In anticipation of the new season Theatricum joins with the Topanga Farmers Market to present a “Welcome Back Topanga Community Gathering” on Saturday, Feb. 15 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Subtitled a “Day of Healing,” the free event will celebrate the resilience of the vibrant Topanga community and offer thanks to Fire Station 69, the L.A. County Sheriff and emergency responders. Activities will include a tree-planting ceremony and theater activities for all ages, as well as a marketplace to benefit families and businesses impacted by the Palisades Fire.

The month of May signals the start of Theatricum’s annual “School Days” field trip program, bringing students to Topanga to learn about Shakespeare and the craft of theater, as well as MOMentum Place, which creates a fantastical world of aerial and circus performers, dancers and musicians every year on Mother’s Day (Sunday, May 11).

Officially launching the Summer Repertory Season on June 7 and running through Sept. 13, William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, one of the most exuberant and spirited battles of the sexes ever written, is sure to offer audiences a bit of escape. In this sparkling comedy of love, gossip and redemption, Beatrice and Benedick’s witty and sharp verbal jousts are pointedly calculated to wound. Yet beneath their animosity lies a mutual attraction that neither dares confess—until circumstances unite them to rescue young friends and unmask their own true love.

Returning June 8 through September 15 by-popular-demand, the company’s signature production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream sees the surrounding Topanga woods morph into the magical forest of the Bard’s most entertaining and beguiling comedy, where comical misunderstandings and the pain of unrequited love are resolved through midsummer night revelries and the enduring power of nature.

What compromise is possible when human dignity and health are on the line, along with a business’s survival, and the economy it supports? From June 21 through October 4, Theatricum presents a new production of Strife, the rarely produced 1909 British drama by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and social activist Sir John Galsworthy. A corporation and its workers must consider untenable options at the climactic peak of a labor strike. Theatricum artistic director Ellen Geer resets Galsworthy’s play in 1890s Pennsylvania amid the industrial unrest and labor movements of America’s Gilded Age.

The world premiere of The Seagull: Malibu, playing July 12 through October 5, is Geer’s evocative retelling of Anton Chekhov’s timeless masterpiece. Set against the backdrop of a country transitioning from the ideals of the free-love era to the self-centered “Me Generation,” this production will transport audiences to the sun-soaked, yet tumultuous shores of 1970s Malibu to explore the societal and artistic upheavals of a culture in flux. In the aftermath of the civil rights movement, a disillusioned young writer is haunted by the rise of a consumer-driven, plasticized world and the early warning signs of climate change. With the crashing waves of Malibu as both a literal and metaphorical backdrop, Chekhov’s exploration of human fragility, ambition and the search for love and meaning reminds audiences of the fragile threads that unite us all.

Wine in the Wilderness by celebrated writer Alice Childress is set to open August 24 in a production directed by Theatricum veteran Gerald C. Rivers, with performances continuing through October 19. In 1964, as race riots blaze on the streets outside his Harlem home, painter Bill Jameson works feverishly to complete a triptych depicting his vision of Black womanhood. As he struggles to find his final inspiration, his friends discover the perfect model in Tommy, a woman they meet at a bar after she’s been burned out of her home in the riots. But Jameson’s artistic vision is challenged by the arrival of this unexpected muse who refuses to be bound by his shallow assumptions of all that Black womanhood can be.

Unlike most companies in L.A. that stage continuous runs of a single play, Theatricum opens each play in rapid succession over the course of the season. By summer’s end, all five plays will be running concurrently — making it possible to see them all in a single September weekend.

A special add-on interdisciplinary experience, Echoes of the New World, a world premiere conceived and directed by Theatricum resident music director Marshall McDaniel, gets three performances on October 10, October 11 and October 17. Civilizations collide, giving way to the brilliant resilience of identity in an evocative interplay of sound, movement and storytelling that explores the complexities of cultural legacy and reconciliation.

Other events this season include Family Fundays, a half-hour of interactive storytelling, music, and friendship for kids seven and under (but open to the whole family) every Sunday morning June 15 through August 3 (dark July 27); comedy improv with Theatricum’s resident troupe Off the Grid at the end of each month (Friday, June 27; Thursday, July 24; Tuesday, Aug. 26; Friday, Sept. 26), and the annual Under the Oaks salon series, offering What the Constitution Means to Me (Thursday, September 4); a new edition of the Under the Oaks Composer Collective (Thursday, September 11); When You Speak of Love: Kurt Weill in Songs & Letters (Thursday, September 18); and Theatricum Cabaret: A Tribute to Joni Mitchell (Thursday, September 25). On Saturday, Dec. 13, celebrate the holidays with Theatricum’s fifth annual Holiday Family Faire.

Named “One of the 50 Coolest Places in Los Angeles” by Buzz magazine and “Best Theater in the Woods” by LA Weekly, Theatricum was founded in the ’50s by actor Will Geer as a haven for out-of-work performers during the Hollywood Blacklist. Incorporated as a non-profit in 1973, Will’s family continues his legacy, presenting theater and music as a means to shine a light on current social issues. Arts education programs include Academy of the Classics, providing lifelong learning opportunities that inspire and engage kids, teens and adults; the School Days field trip program, serving as many as 8,000 students from public and private schools who travel to Theatricum each spring and fall; and Classroom Enrichment, bringing Theatricum artist/teachers directly into the classroom. By the end of each summer’s unique Youth Drama Camp program, the kids are on their feet performing a complete Shakespeare production on the beautiful outdoor stage.

Theatricum is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture. The School Days program is part of Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.

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