Marta gave her first performance at the Amargosa Opera House on February 10, 1968. When the mining company moved out, the abandoned town drifted into ruin. The theater doubled as a community center for dances, church services, movies, funerals and town meetings. The Mexican colonial style adobe buildings housed the company’s offices, store, dormitory, 23-room hotel and dining room. The Pacific Coast Borax Company built the theater and everything else in Death Valley Junction during the early 1920s. Originally called Corkhill Hall, Marta renamed the theater the Amargosa Opera House. They’d rent the theater for $45.00 a month and handle all repairs themselves.
The next day, the couple struck a deal with Death Valley Junction’s town manager. It actually became the driving force in her life and the inspiration for the Amargosa Operta House from that point on. It would be an understatement to say the experience profoundly affected Marta. Dust and debris covered the theater’s warped and buckled floor. She peered inside and saw several rows of wooden benches facing a small stage. While Tom tended to the tire, Marta explored the town’s old adobe buildings, including an abandoned theater. One morning, when they saw their trailer had a flat tire, they headed to a garage in Death Valley Junction, located a few miles west of the California-Nevada border. After months of touring and presenting her one-woman theatrical revue to audiences throughout the country, they decided to spend a week camping in Death Valley. Married in 1962, Marta and husband Tom found themselves in California during the spring of 1967. This is exactly what she did when she took her solo performance on the road. Becket appeared in Broadway productions including “Showboat,” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” and “A Wonderful Town.” But she craved to dance her own dances, design her own costumes and create her own shows. Here, her inspiration has turned virtually nothing into something amazing - an artistic oasis in the desert.Īs a young woman, Ms. Since 1968, this (then) 44 year-old ballerina and actress who once danced and sang on Broadway in New York City, has been singing and dancing in her own productions in her own theater in her own town of Death Valley Junction. Such a person is Marta Becket, diva of the Amargosa Opera House.
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