AMARGOSA
LA Weekly
April 14-20, 2000

In 1967, a 43-year-old Broadway ballerina named Marta Becket stopped off to repair a flat in Death Valley Junction, California, and found an abandoned theater. On the spot she leased the building and since then has worked to renovate the theater and muralize its walls. She now uses it to showcase her own dance pieces for tourist audiences. Becket had to overcome a disapproving father and a clinging mother who squandered all Marta's earnings, but the isolation of Death Valley Junction seems to have liberated her creative spirit, and director Todd Robinson paints a fascinating portrait of her quixotic, finally successful life. (JP)

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