One-woman performer behind Amargosa Opera House dies at 92
Posted Feb 1, 2017 11:38:47 AM.
Last Updated Feb 1, 2017 01:20:53 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Marta Becket, a dancer and performance artist who spent decades presenting one-woman shows at a remote Mojave Desert community hall made famous as the Amargosa Opera House, has died.
A deputy coroner in California’s Inyo County says Becket died Monday at her home in Death Valley Junction, California, at age 92.
Becket and her then-husband discovered the abandoned theatre in 1967 in an old borax mining company town near the California-Nevada state line, about 95 miles west of Las Vegas.
She made her debut in 1968 at the renamed Amargosa Opera House, and continued to dance, no matter how many people were in the audience, until February 2012.
Becket’s story was captured in 2000 in the documentary “Amargosa.”
Her autobiography, “To Dance on Sands,” was published in 2006.
