Like Dad, Like Daughter at Theatricum Botanicum : A family’s passion forms a haven for actors

Acting is more than a family business for Ellen Geer. It’s a family passion.

Her father is the late actor (and famous “Waltons” grandpa) Will Geer; her mother, actress Herta Ware; her siblings--Thad Geer, Kate Geer and Melora Marshall--actors all.

In 1953, Geer pere , experiencing the ugly realities of the Hollywood blacklist, bought 4 1/2 wooded acres in Topanga, carved out an outdoor stage and founded an open-air working haven for himself and other blacklisted actors. In 1956, Geer hit the regional stage route with his family and the theater disbanded. But in 1973, he returned to California permanently--and the theater workshops were reborn.

With the actor’s death in 1978, his children banded together and established the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum as a nonprofit organization. What was once a road sign signaling passers-by that a play was ready for viewing is now a polished three-play summer repertory. A School Days field trip program brings in 6,000 children annually to meet Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare--and see a Shakespeare play. There’s also a Summer Youth Drama Camp, an Intensive Shakespeare seminar and an Academy of the Classics--held summers at the theater and winters at First Methodist Church in Hollywood.

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Overseeing it all is artistic director Ellen Geer, who lives nearby with singer-songwriter husband Peter Alsop and two young daughters--and balances her theater time with commutes into town for such “bread and butter” commercial work as a recurring role on CBS’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

“I select the material, the directors and go through the casts,” Geer said of her theatrical duties. “And I try to be in one play a year.” This summer, she’s appearing in Tennessee Williams’ “Night of the Iguana,” which is in repertory with Shakespeare’s “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” and her expanded version of Will Geer’s “Americana--Saints and Sinners.” (When the elder Geer first did it, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman were the staple heroes; Ellen has added such contemporary figures as Alice Walker, Caesar Chavez and Jesse Jackson.)

“It’s bound to bring controversy,” she said, “because everyone’s Americana is their Americana. We have an angry Vietnam soldier in one section, another section on World War II. There must be some way for us to learn that war’s a dinosaur. We don’t need to do it; we’re too smart. We’re a wonderful race. I find the piece brings out feelings of history that we all have. Kids go to school and learn dates but they have no feelings attached; they don’t care about their history. The only way we can change that is if we have some kind of connection.”

The actress figures that with her politically charged upbringing, a certain amount of activism was inevitable. “I believe in unions,” she said. “I sing union songs, I care about the working class. That’s the way I was brought up. If I were brought up as a Republican, who knows?”

The Geer name, she feels, has been both a plus and a minus professionally. Yet she never gets tired of being referred to as “the daughter of”--”because he was a great man, a remarkable man, and I loved him deeply.”

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In terms of running the theater, the tribute has manifested itself in a sort of fusion of her father’s point of view and her own.

Their backgrounds were wildly different: Indiana-born Will Geer was a graduate of the University of Chicago and New York University with a master’s degree in botany, who “knew a lot about 13th-Century theater.” Ellen attended 17 schools growing up and later worked with Tyrone Guthrie, Ellis Rabb and William Ball. The combination of dual methods “is a bit eclectic,” she admits. “But it’s wonderful that I was exposed to that kind of theater, and it’s my responsibility to pass it on as well as do it.”

Geer comfortably shares the creative reins with fellow company members.

“There’s so many people who love this place and give to this place,” she said. “I love working with people like that--who care about the work we’re doing, the kind of audiences we attract. I have one life to live, right? I don’t want to bat my head against a wall if people really don’t care.” She needed little persuading to step into the fray: “My career was going great as far as repertory theater. But this was something I wanted to do--because I saw theater slipping into what I call corporate theater, the sense of hustling we have to do to survive.”

Geer herself is not without financial worries. Though the land is paid for, she’s always looking for more money--mostly for the actors: “Maybe our sets and costumes aren’t gorgeous, maybe we don’t have enough people to answer the phone. But our actors are paid. That’s primary.

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“We do what every other nonprofit theater does,” she shrugged. “We solicit funds from corporations and foundations, we put on little fund-raisers and big fund-raisers. That’s the terrible tradition of arts in this country. Theater actors should be honored, and we’re not--unless you’re a star. And now we’re training audiences to see ritzy looks, ritzy things. . . . Theater is something for the mind and the heart and the soul and the intimacy and the immediate reaction between the audience and actor.”

The Botanicum’s back-to-nature visual lushness is a definite plus.

“We’ve all been mechanized and glass-eyed; we need the source,” Geer said firmly. “We need it. I don’t care how old you are, how sophisticated you’ve become. I can get dressed up, go to town, do my thing, play the game--then come out here and be a human being in a way that was very difficult when I lived in Hollywood.” There are no gates, bars or fears: “The only time I have a problem is when we have the Blues Festival--over 1,000 people show up--and some of them get a little drunk and step on the plants. That bothers me.”

In spite of the peace she’s found here, Geer makes no projections into the future. “I might be gone in two years,” she said lightly. “Who knows? Theaters are like a flame: They come up and they go out. They come up because they’re needed. It doesn’t mean forever and ever--or if it does, there are other people who can guide it through. I don’t believe in putting a stamp on things. But that’s part of what we do in this country, isn’t it? You put your name on your building, your name on your checks.”

If Geer’s ego isn’t buried at the Botanicum, her heart certainly is. Daughters Willow and Megan flit around in gossamer gowns (they’re Isadora Duncan’s protegees in “Americana”) replaying her own childhood at the theater. “It’s a wonderful life,” she nodded. “And I’m a very lucky puppy. I don’t know how you juggle the balls. I guess you just give time to each one the best you can. If something’s more needy, take care of it. Let the other things slide. And don’t expect to be perfect--at any of it. Then there’s no reason you can’t have it all.”