Co-Directed by Mother Nature

The actors’ words float on the breeze, accompanied by a chorus of birds and a string section of crickets, while at the control board, Mother Nature tweaks the lighting splashed across her stage.

As the outdoor theater season begins in earnest, shows are being presented in amphitheaters and parks everywhere--relaxed, informal settings where audiences can have a cultural experience without being cooped up indoors, away from Southern California’s magical summer days and nights.

“It opens up all your senses,” says Ellen Geer, artistic director of the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, nestled in a wooded glen in Topanga Canyon.

Lisa Wolpe, artistic director of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, which is performing outdoors for the first time this summer, waxes still more poetic: “It’s being connected to the earth and the sky and the humans that walk between those two elements. It gives a context for mortality, and it brings in the beauty of life in a way that the artificial never can.”

Shakespeare’s plays, first presented in English open-air theaters in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, are particularly prevalent and at home outdoors. But offerings this year are as varied as a stage version of the quirky 1972 film “Harold and Maude” and Noel Coward’s wry “Blithe Spirit.”

Here’s a select list of professional outdoor productions. Full performing schedules can be found in Weekend’s theater listings, Page 46, or online at https://www.calendarlive.com. As future shows open, they will be added to those listings.

Pack a pre-show picnic and check out our tips for maximizing your comfort on Page 10.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, Topanga

When McCarthy-era finger-pointing caused actor Will Geer to be blacklisted, he and his family retreated to Topanga Canyon, where they began growing fruit and vegetables as well as presenting shows. The original shows, begun in 1951, lasted just a couple of years; in 1973, Geer and his family began again in earnest.

This year, the lineup takes its thematic cue from “Harold and Maude,” about a 20-ish man who is averse to love until he meets a free-spirited 79-year-old woman. “Maude teaches Harold how to go after love and open himself up to life,” says artistic director Ellen Geer, the late actor’s daughter. “It’s simple, really, but often the simplest things get complicated.”

That idea is echoed in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” which opened last weekend, and the upcoming “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

Ellen Geer appeared in the movie version of “Harold and Maude” as Sunshine, one of the computer dates Harold’s mother sets up for him (the “Romeo and Juliet” girl, if you remember the story). On stage beginning July 8, she advances to the role of Maude, and her youngest daughter, Willow Geer-Alsop, alternates with another actress as Sunshine. (Geer family members constitute a sizable segment of each summer’s repertory company.)

* Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. “The Taming of the Shrew,” through Sept. 24. “Harold and Maude,” July 8-Sept. 30. “Our Town,” July 29-Oct. 21. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Sept. 1-Oct. 22. (310) 455-3723.

Amenities: Seating for 200 on wood benches with backs, closest to the stage, and for 99 more on backless concrete tiers higher up. A sun shade covers the lower area. Picnics OK; some tables. Two cafes on site.

Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, part of Summer Nights at the Ford, Hollywood

Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” is about a woman posing as a man who falls in love with a man while fleeing the embraces of a smitten woman. Quite a gender-bender, yes? Now, imagine it as performed entirely by women and girls.

That’s what the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company is doing as it begins performances today at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre as part of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission’s annual summer arts festival.

As unusual as the casting might sound, it isn’t that different from casts during Shakespeare’s day, when laws forbidding women’s appearance on the stage meant that all roles were played by men. “It’s just a tiny turn of the toe--just a slight shift in direction--to have an all-female company instead of an all-male company,” says Lisa Wolpe, artistic director of the 8-year-old company.

Wolpe is directing “Twelfth Night,” which she has set in an island locale in the 1920s. Many touches, such as the music and costuming, will be Balinese or Indonesian, inspired by a recent trip Wolpe made to Bali.

“I found myself in a place I didn’t quite understand,” she says, “and I think that’s a great place to begin any spiritual journey,” as the play’s central characters--a twin brother and sister--do when they are shipwrecked in a foreign land, each thinking the other is dead.

* John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. “Twelfth Night,” today-June 25. (323) 461-3673.

Amenities: 1,241 plastic armchairs. Picnics OK; some tables. Two cafes on site.

Grove Theater Center, Garden Grove, and Muckenthaler Cultural Center, Fullerton

A couple of decidedly nontraditional stagings of Shakespeare are on the bill at Grove Theater Center’s Festival Amphitheater, traveling on to the Muckenthaler’s Theater on the Green series.

Will grooves into the disco era in “A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream,” dreamed up by L.A.-based Troubadour Theater Company, opening July 7.

And in “Hamlet,” opening Aug. 17, Jane Macfie will portray the Danish prince who faces a series of wrenching decisions. Grove artistic director Kevin Cochran, who is directing the production, says he didn’t set out to rewrite Shakespeare, but when he took stock of his available actors, Macfie was best suited to the role. Then, “the more we looked at doing it with a woman, the more interesting it became,” he says.

Among the resulting shifts: a study of a mother-daughter relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude instead of mother-son, and a lesbian relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia, whose skittish romance, as scripted by Shakespeare, becomes even more so. “There’s so much doubt and playing going on, on both sides,” Cochran says of Hamlet and Ophelia. “There’s so much of: ‘Last week you were declaring your undying love and devotion, and this week you’re telling me to go to a nunnery,’ and this just heightens that feeling.”

* Grove Theater Center, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton. A show to be announced, June 15-25 in Garden Grove, June 29-July 15 in Fullerton. “A Midsummer Saturday Night’s Fever Dream,” July 7-15 in Garden Grove, Aug. 18-26 in Fullerton. “Blithe Spirit,” July 20-Aug. 5 in Fullerton only. “Hamlet,” Aug. 17-27 in Garden Grove, Sept. 7-17 in Fullerton. (714) 741-9555.

Amenities: At the Grove: 300 plastic armchairs. Picnics OK; some tables. Cafe on site. At Muckenthaler: 246 metal bench seats. Picnics OK; some tables. Vendor on site.

Shakespeare Festival/LA, Marina del Rey, downtown L.A. and Palos Verdes

For 17 years, Shakespeare Festival/LA has been feeding both body and spirit by collecting food for the needy in lieu of admission to most of its performances.

Beginning June 29, the festival will travel to three Los Angeles-area parks to present Shakespeare’s dark-tinged romantic comedy “Much Ado About Nothing.” The central characters “are always bubbling over with their sense of fun and games and mischief,” says director Brendon Fox.

As a context for their gamesmanship, Fox--perhaps best known for directing the recent “Private Eyes” at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre--is setting the play in present-day Southern California, among naval officers and midshipmen enjoying some R&R; as guests at a country club.

For added flavor, Fox will infuse the spirit of the film comedies of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, as well as music of the ‘30s and ‘40s, marrying the sophistication of those art forms to Shakespeare’s.

* June 29-July 2 at Burton Chase Park, 13650 Mindanao Way, Marina del Rey; July 6-16 at Pershing Square, 532 S. Olive St., L.A. (213) 489-4127. July 20-30, South Coast Botanic Gardens, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., Palos Verdes (admission is charged in Palos Verdes). (310) 377-4316.

Amenities: Space for 600 in Marina del Rey, 800 downtown L.A., 900 in Palos Verdes; bring blankets or low-profile seating. Picnics OK; some tables in Marina del Rey and downtown. Food vendors on site at all venues.

Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival, Thousand Oaks

For the fourth Kingsmen festival, beginning June 30, co-artistic director Michael Arndt will direct “Romeo and Juliet,” set in Ireland in the early 19th century with Catholic Capulets and Protestant Montagues. He chose this context as one he thought would help today’s viewers better appreciate the situation faced by young lovers who, to be together, must circumvent the hostility between their families.

Local theater director and stage and TV actor Allan Hunt will direct “The Taming of the Shrew,” setting the tale of squabbling would-be lovers Kate and Petruchio in the Wild West of the late 19th century, with Kate as a Calamity Jane-type character.

* Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival, Kingsmen Park, California Lutheran University, Olsen and Mountclef roads, Thousand Oaks. “Romeo and Juliet,” June 30-July 30. “The Taming of the Shrew,” July 14-Aug. 6. (805) 493-3455.

Amenities: A smooth, grassy hillside accommodates about 1,000; bring a blanket or low-profile seating. Picnics OK; tables limited. Renaissance Faire-like activities and food before each show.

Foliage Theatre Project, Mid-Wilshire district

Since 1994, this nonprofit group has been staging the classics in ways intended to heighten young people’s appreciation without insulting their intelligence, or that of their elders. This summer’s show, opening Aug. 19, is the Greek playwright Aristophanes’ comedy “Lysistrata,” from 412 BC.

Frustrated while the men are off fighting a war, the women of Athens make a pact that the next time their husbands return on leave, sex will be withheld until the guys call off their military campaign.

“I don’t think it’s a play about sex,” says artistic director Deborah Guyer Greene, who is directing. “It’s a play about need, the need for each other, and when that doesn’t happen, where the energy goes to.”

Staged in Hancock Park, adjacent to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and George C. Page Museum, these productions tend to roam, so don’t plan to be sedentary. For children ages 8 to 18, workshops based on the play are held afterward.

* Foliage Theatre Project, Hancock Park, enter at 6th Street and Ogden Drive. Aug. 19-Oct. 8. (310) 284-7974.

Amenities: 200 to 250 people can comfortably gather; bring a blanket or low-profile seating. Picnics OK; no tables.

Also outdoors

In the Old Globe Theatre’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre in San Diego: “Henry V,” July 2-Aug. 12, and “The Trojan Women,” Sept. 3-Oct. 14, (619) 239-2255. In PCPA Theaterfest’s Festival Theatre in Solvang: “Gypsy,” today-July 1; “The Taming of the Shrew,” July 6-23; “Anything Goes,” July 27-Aug. 12; “Deathtrap,” Aug. 17-Sept. 3; and “The 1940’s Radio Hour,” Sept. 7-Oct. 1, (805) 922-8313.

Festival Theatre in Solvang

Kingsmen Park (California Lutheran University)

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum

John Anson Ford Amphitheatre

Pershing Square

Hancock Park

Burton Chace Park

Muckenthaler Cultural Center

Grove Theater Center

South Coast Botanic Gardens

Old Globe Theatre’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre in San Diego