If you blew through all eight episodes of BEEF Season 2 in a single sitting, there’s a good chance you spent at least part of that time wondering whether the pristine cliffside country club, the sun-drenched Ojai neighborhoods, and the ultra-modern Malibu mansions were real. Spoiler: most of them are, and some you can actually visit.

Beef Season 2 Filming Locations

Principal photography took place from January to June 2025, with the crew working primarily across Los Angeles and Ventura County before heading to Seoul, South Korea for final scenes. The show’s production designer Grace Yun spent months crafting a visual world that feels like an endless, slightly suffocating vacation, all butter yellows, eternal green lawns, and sun-soaked Spanish architecture.

1. Monte Vista Point Country Club – Spanish Hills Club, Camarillo, California

The fictional Monte Vista Point Country Club is the beating heart of Season 2, a gilded cage dressed up as a paradise. From the very first scene, the show wants you to understand exactly why someone would do almost anything to belong here. The camera sweeps over a cliffside lawn at golden hour, Pacific Ocean shimmering below, guests in linen and cashmere holding cocktails like they were born doing it.

The outdoor athletic facilities, the manicured tennis courts, the championship golf course, and the long fairway views were all filmed at Spanish Hills Club in Camarillo, California, a private country club perched dramatically on the highest point in Camarillo with sweeping views of the Santa Rosa Valley and the Topa Topa mountains. The club sits just minutes from the San Fernando Valley, Conejo Valley, Malibu, and Santa Barbara, which made it a logistically ideal base for the production team.

Lee Sung Jin has been candid about where the Season 2 concept came from. “With the success of Season 1, I had the opportunity to visit a lot of country clubs. It was interesting to see the level of comfort and luxury that is afforded to certain people,” he explained. “As I started to catch myself getting a little bit comfortable, I started thinking maybe there’s something here.”

The club’s Spanish-style architecture, white-washed walls, red clay-tiled roofs, arched walkways gave production designer Grace Yun exactly the kind of aspirational canvas she needed. Her color brief for the entire season was built around the idea of an “endless vacation of lush vibrancy, with eternal green grass and butter yellows,” drawing from the natural topography of the surrounding hills at sunset.

Spanish Hills Club is a private, members-only club, so showing up unannounced won’t get you past the gate. That said, the club does host private events and weddings, so there are ways in if you’re motivated enough.

Also Read: Where Was Roommates Filmed? All the Real Locations Behind the Netflix Comedy

2. Monte Vista Point Country Club – Montecito Club, Santa Barbara, California

If Spanish Hills provided the sporting grounds, it was the Montecito Club in Santa Barbara that gave Monte Vista Point its soul. The sweeping great lawns, the elegant clubhouse exteriors that appear in nearly every outdoor establishing shot, and that iconic cliffside terrace opening scene, all Montecito.

While Monte Vista is fictional, much of Monte Vista’s outdoor athletic facilities were recreated at Spanish Hills Club’s tennis courts and golf courses, while Montecito provided the space for the lawns and clubhouse exteriors.

The Montecito Club is one of the most storied private clubs on the California coast, located in one of the wealthiest enclaves in the country. It’s a stone’s throw from where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle settled, which tells you everything you need to know about the caliber of wealth the show is riffing on. The club’s gorgeous grounds, draped in mature trees, terraced lawns, and panoramic ocean views made it the perfect physical embodiment of what Sung Jin calls “a perfect microcosm of society.”

Like Spanish Hills, Montecito Club is a private institution, but its exterior and grounds have become recognizable to anyone who has spent time around Santa Barbara. Drive along the coast and you’ll catch glimpses of the same manicured hedges and clay rooflines you’ve been staring at all season.

Also Read: Where Was Balls Up Filmed? See Locations, Cast, and Reviews

3. Josh and Lindsay’s House – Calabasas, California

One of the smartest location choices in Season 2 is the home belonging to Joshua and Lindsay Martín. The show tells us they live in Ojai – that artsy, spiritual, slightly hippie-adjacent city in Ventura County that has become a refuge for a certain kind of moneyed, wellness-obsessed millennial. But in reality, their half-renovated, warm-toned, English-cottage-meets-rustic-California home is located in Calabasas.

The disconnect is intentional and quietly hilarious. Calabasas is, of course, most famous for being Kardashian country, gated communities, surgical perfection, and the kind of ostentatious wealth that doesn’t try to hide itself. But Josh and Lindsay’s corner of it looks nothing like that. Their home is all exposed beams, earthy textures, and half-finished renovation projects that somehow feel simultaneously aspirational and deeply defeated.

Lee Sung Jin has described the house as a physical metaphor for the marriage itself. The couple has been meaning to finish the remodel for years, just like they’ve been meaning to fix their relationship, and neither is getting done any time soon. Set decorator Kellie Jo Tinney leaned into Lindsay’s “English cottage” aesthetic to show how she uses objects and decor as a substitute for genuine emotional connection: accumulating things because she can’t seem to accumulate the intimacy she actually wants.

The house sits in a neighborhood that gestures toward the organic, laid-back Ojai vibe while being firmly rooted in LA suburban reality, an irony the show wears openly. You can drive through the Calabasas hills and get the general atmosphere, though the specific property is privately owned.

4. Ashley and Austin’s Apartment – Newhall, California

While Ashley and Austin’s apartment interior scenes were shot on a studio set, the exterior establishing shots were captured at a real apartment complex in Newhall, a community within the city of Santa Clarita in northern Los Angeles County.

Newhall isn’t glamorous, it’s a working-class, historically scrappy corner of the LA sprawl that has been slowly gentrifying for years. For a young Gen Z couple who are renters by necessity rather than by choice, it makes complete sense. They’re doing what their generation does: personalizing a space they don’t own, making it feel like theirs through thrift finds and family heirlooms, building something sentimental in a world that doesn’t offer them much permanence.

Production designer Grace Yun described their approach to the space as “sentimental nesting” – driven by objects with personal meaning rather than aesthetic aspiration. There’s no Pinterest board behind this apartment; there’s just two people trying to feel at home somewhere they’re not sure they belong.

Many pivotal sequences for BEEF Season 2 were lensed across Los Angeles, with Radford Studio Center at 4024 Radford Avenue in Studio City serving as the primary production location for interior sets like the apartment, which explains why the exterior and interior feel like they could be two different places, because they are.

5. Austin, Ashley, and Eunice’s Lunch Spot – Garden Wok, Tarzana, California

One of the season’s most uncomfortable scenes, and this show is not short on uncomfortable scenes, takes place at a lunch Ashley arranges with Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), Chairwoman Park’s interpreter and inner-circle gatekeeper. Ashley is trying to curry favor and establish an alliance; what she gets instead is a masterclass in politeness as social warfare.

The fictional restaurant is called China Bamboo House in the show, but the actual location is Garden Wok, a Chinese restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana, in the San Fernando Valley. It’s a real, functional restaurant – nothing like the pristine, expense-account dining spots you’d associate with the country club world, which is precisely why it works so well for this scene. The slightly casual setting undercuts Ashley’s attempts to perform sophistication, which is exactly what the scene needs.

Garden Wok is publicly accessible, which means yes, you can absolutely go eat there. If you find yourself in the San Fernando Valley and want to eat where the beef unfolded, Tarzana is worth the detour.

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6. Pixie Grove Retreat – Agoura Hills, California

In a subplot that captures the millennial obsession with pastoral escape and “experiential” luxury, Josh and Lindsay visit a couples’ newly opened resort called Pixie Grove Retreat. They go ostensibly for inspiration, they want to transform their own home into a luxury bed and breakfast, but mostly, if we’re being honest, they go to feel superior. They expect to be unimpressed. They are not.

The sprawling, 100-acre property that leaves them speechless is actually set in the rolling canyon landscape of Agoura Hills, California – a community tucked into the Santa Monica Mountains between Thousand Oaks and Malibu. Agoura Hills has that specific SoCal quality of feeling genuinely wild and remote while being less than 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The oak-studded canyons and open grasslands give it a completely different energy from the manicured opulence of the country club scenes, which is exactly the point.

The Pixie Grove Retreat scenes represent the show at its most scenically seductive. The landscape almost steals the scene, which is saying something given that Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan are standing in it.

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7. Chairwoman Park’s Mansion – Malibu, California

If you want to understand where Chairwoman Park sits in the food chain, look at her house. While the country club drips with old-money aesthetics, warm Spanish architecture, ivy, clay tiles, chandelier-lit dining rooms, her personal California residence is something else entirely: a brutally modern, glass-and-concrete oceanfront structure in Malibu that communicates power without saying a word.

Production designer Grace Yun was specific about the intention behind this choice. Park’s wealth, she explained, is “embedded in the architecture. It’s actually in the texture of the walls and in the flow of the space.” The club is the arena she owns; this house is who she is when no one’s watching, or rather, when everyone is watching on her terms.

The property is privately owned and sits along the Malibu coastline, accessible only by the road that runs along Pacific Coast Highway. You won’t get inside, but you can get close enough to appreciate the architecture and the setting, which, honestly, is half the point of Malibu anyway.

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8. Troy’s “Park City” Ski Chalet – Thousand Oaks, California

In what might be the season’s most deliciously on-the-nose illustration of how the ultra-wealthy live, Troy (William Fichtner) – a Monte Vista Point member with seemingly limitless resources and a certain cavalier warmth that makes him deeply suspicious – whisks Josh off to Park City, Utah, on a private jet to cheer him up after his dachshund, Burberry, goes missing.

Once in Park City (or so the show tells us), they enjoy a private concert by British electronic band Hot Chip inside Troy’s lavish ski chalet. It’s the kind of gesture so casually extravagant it barely registers as unusual to the people doing it – which is the entire point. The sequence is meant to show how seamlessly the truly wealthy move through the world, treating geography as an inconvenience rather than a barrier.

In reality, neither Josh nor the Hot Chip performance ever left Southern California. The chalet scenes were filmed at a private estate in Thousand Oaks, California, a suburban city in Ventura County that, when dressed up correctly, apparently passes for a Utah mountain retreat. It’s a testament to production design how convincingly the interiors sell the altitude and the exclusivity.

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9. Ojai Main Street – Ojai Avenue, Ojai, California

While Josh is off being helicopter’d between states, Lindsay is back in their fictional Ojai neighborhood, doing something far more mundane and far more human: searching for their missing dog on foot, posting flyers on telephone poles, and bumping into people she’d rather not see.

It’s in this setting – Ojai Avenue, specifically the stretch across from Libbey Park, that she runs into Austin and Ashley, also looking for Burberry. The chance meeting softens something between Ashley and Lindsay, and it’s one of the season’s quieter, more genuinely felt moments. The location earns a lot of that emotional credit.

Ojai Avenue is real, publicly accessible, and exactly as charming on camera as it is in person. The Spanish Colonial Revival architecture that runs along the shopping strip the, arched walkways, the low-slung storefronts, the mature trees is authentic Ojai, designated a historic district. Libbey Park, which sits right across the street, is a beloved public green space that hosts concerts, festivals, and the kind of lazy afternoon wandering the show uses to give its characters a moment to breathe.

If you’re visiting the filming locations of BEEF Season 2 in person, Ojai is the most satisfying stop because unlike the private country clubs and gated estates, Ojai Avenue is genuinely open to anyone. Walk the arcade, sit in the park, order something at one of the restaurants that line the street. It feels exactly like the show makes it look.

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10. Troy’s SoCal Mansion – Mulholland Highway, Malibu, California

Troy, it turns out, has more than one impressive property because of course he does. In the Season 2 finale, Josh arrives at Troy’s Southern California home looking for assistance, and the stakes of that visit are matched by the drama of the location.

Location scouts searched through the hills above Malibu and settled on a home on Mulholland Highway, the winding, scenic road that traces the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains between Calabasas and Malibu. The house exudes the kind of rugged California luxury that is somehow even more intimidating than the clean modernism of Park’s oceanfront property: it’s warm, masculine, impeccably situated, and deeply, quietly loaded.

Mulholland Highway is a public road and one of the great scenic drives in Southern California. While you obviously can’t knock on the door of Troy’s fictional mansion, the drive itself winding through the mountains with views stretching out to the ocean on one side and the Valley on the other, is absolutely worth doing. It’s the kind of road that reminds you why people pay absurd amounts of money to live near it.

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11. The Seoul Hotel – Conrad Hotel, Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul, South Korea

The final act of BEEF Season 2 relocates the chaos to South Korea, and the transition is handled with the same visual precision as everything that came before it. When Lindsay, Ashley, Austin, and Ava (Mikaela Hoover) land in Seoul, they check into a hotel for a night of what the show calls in a line that lands like a threat – “heavily surveilled good sleep” before their visit to the mysterious Trochos facility.

Those scenes were filmed at the Conrad Hotel in the Yeongdeungpo District of Seoul, a luxury business hotel that opened in 2013 inside the IFC (International Finance Centre) tower complex on the banks of the Han River. The Conrad Seoul is exactly as sleek and slightly unnerving as the show makes it look.

Standard rooms measure 48 square metres, with unobstructed views of the Han River and the hotel features a signature spiral staircase up to the fifth floor that has been nicknamed “the staircase to heaven.” The hotel’s connection to the premium IFC shopping mall gives it, as one critic noted, a “first-class cosmopolitan feeling” which is precisely the vibe the production was after for this stretch of the season.

Additional portions of BEEF Season 2 were also shot in and around the Amorepacific World Headquarters at 100 Hangang-daero in Seoul’s Yongsan District, during the final phase of the shooting process in June 2025. Director Lee Sung Jin described shooting in Seoul as one of the most memorable parts of the production, particularly working alongside the Korean cast members.

Unlike most of the California locations in the show, the Conrad Hotel Seoul is fully open to the public. Rooms are bookable, the restaurants are open to non-guests, and the lobby alone that soaring spiral staircase included is worth the stop. If you’re planning a Seoul trip and want to do a proper BEEF pilgrimage, this is the one location where you can actually sleep where the cast slept.

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12. Primary Studio Production – Radford Studio Center, Studio City, Los Angeles

Behind every exterior location is a studio, and for BEEF Season 2, that studio was Radford Studio Center at 4024 Radford Avenue in Studio City. The filming venue offers ample office space, green rooms, dressing rooms, multi-purpose rooms, and hair-and-makeup rooms, making it an ideal shooting site for all kinds of projects. Interior scenes, including Ashley and Austin’s apartment, various club interiors, and other controlled environments were built and filmed on the Radford lots.

Radford is one of Hollywood’s busiest independent studio facilities and has hosted dozens of major productions over the decades. It’s not open for public tours, but it sits in the middle of Studio City’s media corridor and has shaped the look of countless shows you’ve seen without ever knowing it.

Netflix’s Emmy-winning anthology series returned on April 16, 2026, with a brand-new story and a cast that somehow makes you want to root for everyone and no one at the same time. Creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin has swapped out the chaotic road-rage energy of Season 1 for something a little more insidious – a pressure-cooker of class anxiety, quiet ambition, and very expensive bad behavior, all set inside and around an exclusive Southern California country club.

The new season follows four employees at Monte Vista Point Country Club: the newly engaged Ashley Miller (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin Davis (Charles Melton) – young, striving, and a little naive, and the unhappily married Joshua Martín (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan), who are slowly losing their grip on everything they’ve built. Hovering above them all is the club’s mysterious new billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), whose arrival sets off a chain reaction of favors, manipulation, and spectacularly bad decisions.

BEEF Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix. All eight episodes are available.

-by Paul Fogarty

Seaver College’s Communication Division recently hosted its first-ever career day. Students across majors convened at Pepperdine’s Calabasas campus for a special opportunity to network and hear industry insights from a panel of Pepperdine alumni who are successful leaders in marketing, advertising, and public relations.

Alumnus Nils Granger (’10), athlete marketing manager at Red Bull, served as the panelist moderator, hosting the event alongside integrated marketing and communication professor team Sarah Fischbach and Wangari Njathi. Conversation ranged from practical tips for success in a marketing/communication career to panelists recounting the stories of applying to their first jobs.

L to R: Nils Granger, Nathania Au, Allie Coates, Edwin Duran

Arriving with his wife and three kids, Granger shared that Pepperdine will always be one big family that he is proud to use his expertise to support, especially considering he and his wife met at Seaver and remained college sweethearts throughout.

“There’s a lot of graduating seniors in the room, and I know that the pinnacle of going to college for four years is to get a job,” Granger said to the audience of students. “Don’t worry. Your first job is meant for you to learn and to fine-tune your future; it is only the first chapter of your career. And life has a fascinating way of putting an opportunity in front of you that you would have never imagined.”

For instance, panelist Nathania Au (’24), shopper marketing specialist at beverage company Yerba Madre, told the crowd that she first met Granger as an IMC student. Granger had come to speak to one of her marketing courses, while Au was interviewing for a position at the company he worked for: Red Bull. Considering this serendipity, Au explains that Granger was there to offer helpful guidance as she prepared for her new role postgraduation before joining the Yerba team.

Asked about what advice she’d offer current college students, Au said, “I remember being in the audience at events like this. I was in your shoes. What I would recommend to anyone still in college is to focus less on the quantity of your networking, but the quality. Find the right occasions to have intentional connections.”

Attendees mingling

“It’s fulfilling to have students reach out and help them get placed in jobs where I used to work or currently work. Now it’s fun to hear their creative ideas and what they’re working on,” added Granger.

Additional panelists included Seaver graduates Jillian Unruh Vincent (’18), associate marketing manager of Mattel’s Barbie Global Brand Team; Edwin Duran (’16), client partner of Snapchat; Andrea Grace Mella (’24), media buyer of Publicis Media, and Allie Coates (’22), brand marketing manager of De La Calle Tepache.

Each of the successful young professionals offered advice on how to stand out among a sea of applicants. Vincent, who now leads brand campaigns for newly released Mattel Barbie dolls, shared that in creative spaces, success is all about “capitalizing on your personal strengths.” She encouraged attendees to think of themselves and what they have to offer in broad terms: “You can take all your experiences and apply them to anything in marketing.”

Students chatted with panelists

When invited to discuss AI, many of the panelists shared that senior leadership of their corporations have suggested incorporating the technology into their workflow in ways that would not diminish creativity. To help demonstrate this idea, each panelist offered specifics of how they do so.

“I use AI to expedite my understanding of the industry,” Mella chimed in. “I’ll put in example scenarios as a prompt and that will help train me on how to tackle problems that may arise. This helps me to grow in my career.”

Panelists also suggested fine-tuning skills AI is incapable of doing, such as those of public speaking and overall personal presentation, and they reminded students that the hiring process is mutual. While companies are evaluating them, they also have the agency to choose where they want to work. Many suggested writing a list about what they’re most looking for in a company, from job expectancies to desired work culture.

To conclude the event, panelists answered audience questions. Considering such an  influx of information might be daunting to a college student on the precipice of the career world, alumni reassured all that they’re beginning in the right spot by attending these networking events.

“All of you are already ahead of the game,” Duran said. “Being in this room is step one. ”

• Seaver Newsroom

On Thursday, March 26th 2026, multiple college representatives came to the CHS gym to put up booths and promote their schools to Agoura, Oak Park, and Calabasas students. Universities from all across the nation had stands in the gym, including spokesmen from Vanderbilt and Stanford.

At the start, everyone gathered in the gym to tour around different college advertisements and find what’s right for them. Over 40 colleges and universities came to this event. While the majority of the stalls were for institutes, a few were selling summer programs and outside courses. With the developed Performing Arts Program at Calabasas, there was a noticeable population of artistic and musical-focused schools advertising at the College and Career Knowledge Night.

After the first part of the night, participants moved to the PAEC to listen to speeches by the organizer and our superintendent, and later moved around to explore different rooms, each catered to their specific interests.

The two college and career counselors, Nancy Yumkas and Robin Lutsky, at Calabasas, started by introducing themselves and thanking everyone. Following them, Principal Bennett Wutkee, Alan Lazar, and Superintendent Stepenosky took the mics to advise all the students wondering about college.

Mel Johnson from Los Angeles College of Music says they are a “Contemporary program, so people that play instruments, write their songs, record, produce, want to get into music business and production.”

Many of the colleges that attended the night had this trait in common: they are open to a variety of students in their division. Going around the gym, each booth had a diverse variety of students standing in line, and merchandise for anyone who came up to the stands. Pens, fliers, clips, and more were given out.

Besides educational stalls, the US Military also had multiple booths set up in the corner of the gym. Representatives in full uniform were answering questions about the future in place for high school students venturing into the army right after graduation.

The final part of the night had individuals going to different rooms of the school with professionals in their respective fields, based on the students’ interests. One room had a Community College Specialist for those wondering about the College Essay process, and another had an ASU Professor lecturing about fashion in art.

The whole night was aimed at getting students excited and deciding about college.

Calabasas senior Jenna Juridah started the night super interested in the University of Connecticut for Pre-med, as she had been accepted there, she saw the rest of the booths, and she wanted to explore her other acceptances.

Juridah said, “[I] felt more of a drive to go to those schools. So, some of them accepted me, for instance, the University of the Pacific accepted me. I looked at them, and I talked to them, and they were really interesting.”

–Micah Belzer, Staff Writer- Calabasas High School

Larry Grogin refuses to allow Parkinson’s disease to have the last word in his life.

That’s why he has taken on a cross-country trek — much of it on foot — to not only raise awareness for neurological diseases and funds to fight them, but hope for those who live with such diseases that they can accomplish amazing things.

Grogin, a 71-year-old Bloomingdale, New Jersey resident, has begun a quest to run 100 marathons across the United States in 100 days. The project began March 24 and on Friday, the 19th day, he came through Wheeling, with stops in Ohio later as he headed westward. At each stop, he runs and walks the 26.2 miles of a marathon distance.

Grogin, a chiropractor, acupuncturist and herbalist, has been an avid marathoner and triathlete for much of his life. He has more than 300 marathons and 30 Ironman triathlons under his belt.

Yet when he was told by his doctor in 2019 that he had Parkinson’s disease — a neurodegenerative disease that can lead to body tremors, rigidity and slowness — he felt something he hadn’t experienced with his physicality.

“Vulnerability,” he said. “It was the first time that I thought I can’t muscle my way through and beat it.”

Grogin said he had been a muscle-through guy for much of his life, so living with Parkinson’s forced him to go against how he had operated for so long. With Parkinson’s he said, it’s not about conquering the disease, like one would with cancer. It’s about living with the disease.

“You have to learn how to live with it successfully,” he said. “With Parkinson’s, you think about living your best life.”

And at age 71, that best life was conquering an impressive feat for anyone, much less a septuagenarian with a neurodegenerative disease. Yet these runs and walks are something he said is crucial to living with Parkinson’s successfully.

“Movement is medicine,” Grogin said. “It’s such a powerful tool with Parkinson’s and I’ve come to know it personally. Nothing is better for somebody with Parkinson’s, even if it hurts.”

He admits that sometimes it does hurt. He is chronicling the trek on his Instagram page, runlarryrun26, and talks about the bumps and aches that come with running such distances.

He remains undaunted, though. He’s not doing this just for himself, he said. He’s doing it for so many who battle neurological diseases across the United States.

Grogin mentioned that West Virginia, has the third-highest prevalence for Parkinson’s in the United States with around 7,000 cases, and he said that number will only grow.

So he has turned these runs into a fundraiser — Strides For Humanity through the Davis Phinney Foundation for Parkinson’s — and said he has raised nearly $200,000 so far.

He hasn’t been on this path alone. Multiple friends have been and will be with him through the 100 days. His friend Harry Silver was wrapping up his leg of the trip Friday and was meeting a new group in Ohio.

Silver said he marvels at what Grogin has accomplished so far and what he is trying to accomplish with this trip.

“It’s really extraordinary,” Silver said.

“Watching Larry emotionally but also physically through the ups and downs. He powers through the challenge. It’s remarkable, the kind of inner strength you have to have.”

Grogin plans for that strength to carry him across the country to the final destination — Calabasas, California. He said with a chuckle that when he reaches the finish line, he’s going to sit down, close his eyes and not move for a while. He’ll have earned the rest, and he’ll have shown those with neurological diseases that life doesn’t end with a diagnosis.

“It’s about raising funds, raising awareness and raising people’s hope,” he said. “It’s not a death sentence.

“On one of my runs, I was thinking, I’m not dead,” he added. “I may sweat a little bit. I may drool a little bit. I may stumble a little bit. I may even fall a little bit. But I’m not dead.”

On March 27, the sophomore class attended a performance of Survivors, a one-hour docudrama produced by the Arts For Change organization that brings the Holocaust to life through ten eyewitness accounts by survivors. The production offers students a more immediate personal understanding of one of history’s most devastating events.

Survivors featured the testimonials of Holocaust survivors and how they had to grow up and adapt to the world around them. The performance has become a recurring part of the Calabasas High School curriculum over the past several years. During sophomore year, students typically study the Holocaust in both History and English classes, making the play particularly relevant. Throughout the play, the devastation of the event was felt through the survivors, and how they lost family and friends they made along the way.

The traveling band of actors originated their play at CHS, and have now returned to present for the sophomores. The troop consisted of six actors, and each presented different testimonials.

Adam Weinstein, a history teacher at CHS, believes that seeing the event moves historical knowledge beyond abstract textbooks, bridging the gap between the classroom and real life.

“A lot of times, when you study history, it’s a lot about statistics and numbers. The play helps bring it to life in a way that you might not get in a regular classroom setting.”

Weinstein explained that the play is based on real survivor testimony, allowing students to connect with the material presented.

“It’s actors playing the roles, but it’s based on real-life survivor testimony,” Weinstein said. “The more ways that students can engage with these kinds of things, the better off they’ll be with their understanding.”

By presenting lived experiences, Survivors encourages deeper engagement with difficult topics. Weinstein noted that the production has consistently strengthened students’ comprehension of complex and catastrophic history.

“You’re seeing it in a different perspective than you see in the classroom,” Weinstein said. “This play has certainly contributed toward my students’ understanding of very difficult histories.”

Beyond learning about past events, Weinstein highlighted the purpose of studying history.

“If we’re aware of the past, you can take those things and take steps to hopefully stop it from reoccurring in the present,” Weinstein said. “It’s supposed to also provide encouragement for people to stand up against antisemitism or any other type of discrimination.”

Jade Redfield, a sophomore at CHS, explains why it is important to remember the holocaust and why events like these benefit students.

“They gave a bunch of examples of how history repeats itself, and I think that is true. The genocide of the Holocaust mirrors things that happen today. So I think awareness of the Holocaust and how a lot of people just went with it and were bystanders discourages people from being bystanders in discrimination today.”

The play also demonstrated the many people who helped the Holocaust survivors by allowing them to hide and giving food to Jews. The writer of the play and various actors are descendants of Holocaust survivors, and they drew their inspiration from them.

Organizing the event requires extensive planning and coordination by school admin. Assistant Principal Dr. Katie Booth, who oversees the process, emphasized the importance of setting up logistics.

“We needed to make sure that we have a location and a date that works with all the current productions that are already in place. It’s a lot of coordination about locations and timing, and then meeting with teachers and letting them know.”

Beyond its historical focus, the production connects to broader themes of empathy. By using individual testimonies within a larger moral framework, the production challenges students to not only remember the past, but their own responsibilities in the present.

Booth explained that planning for the event began months in advance.

“The coordination actually started back in August,” Booth said. “One of the first things is finding a space like the PAEC and making sure it works with everything else happening on campus.”

In addition to logistics, Booth shared the importance of the play’s message.

“It is about teaching tolerance and how we can help make a better community by being understanding and kind. So, although it centers around the Holocaust, it also centers around conversations about how we can ensure that we don’t exhibit negative behaviors that have been seen in the past,” said Booth.

Weinstein shared what he hopes his students will learn from the event.

“It’s supposed to also provide encouragement for people to stand up against antisemitism or any other type of discrimination,” said Weinstein.

For educators, the value of studying events like the Holocaust lies in recognizing trends across history. Exposure to these can ensure students have the awareness to break harmful patterns.

“If we’re aware of the past, you can take those things and take steps to hopefully stop it from reoccurring in the present,” said Weinstein.

Part of the goal for students attending is to become aware of injustice and to appreciate all diverse communities.

“We want students to understand how to support others and stand up for people who may be experiencing challenges,” Booth said. “It’s about creating a more supportive and aware community.”

Booth emphasized that the Holocaust remains a critical topic for students to study.

“It’s important that we understand its impact, how that could potentially impact other student groups, and how we can move forward as a community, knowing that we have so many amazing, different groups and individuals on our campus,” said Booth.

Abigail Freeman, a sophomore at CHS, expressed her opinions about the survivors’ play.

“At first, I was thinking, Why would they make this into a play? That sounds really disrespectful, to turn the Holocaust into a play, but I think that they portrayed it really well. They showed the point of view of survivors, and then they also talked about all the different people who died, and I felt that they weren’t going to talk about that. So I’m glad that they mentioned it. I think that it was a good experience,” Freeman said.

Freeman also shared what she hopes students will remember about the performance.

“I hope that they would take away the messages that hate could still happen in the real world today. And to remember the Holocaust, because knowing the past will help us change the future for the better.”

Lastly, Freeman shared why she thinks it’s important to remember the Holocaust and the past.

“There have been stories about how right after the Holocaust, many people didn’t believe that it actually happened. So I think that educating people about it and going to different high schools and telling people a story of the Holocaust is really important,” Freeman said.

The Survivors play encourages students to reflect and apply its lessons to the present. The annual performance remains a tradition that fosters empathy in the Calabasas student body and serves as a reminder of the lasting impact of the Holocaust.

– written Olivia Holzman and Dipanjali Suresh, Calabasas High School