Despite injury, Marta Becket’s desert dance goes on

Editor's note: Today John L. Smith begins a new feature column devoted to people, places and events from around the state and the region.

Like a blithe spirit carried on a desert breeze, Marta Becket has danced for kings and commoners for more than four decades as the singular star performer at the Amargosa Opera House.

She is the diva of Death Valley Junction. As those who have visited the enchanting and antique theater know, royalty mixes with peasants, and both are terribly polite as they watch, surrounded by the remarkable murals that cover the walls inside the theater.

Becket long ago became a legend: If not of screen and stage, then at least of sand and sage.

She has been featured in major magazines and national newspapers. Her memoir, "To Dance on Sands," was published in 2006. Television news crews and documentary filmmakers have captured her performances since the late 1960s, when she began conjuring the ghosts of the past for modern audiences. A film about Becket and her theater, "Amargosa," was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

Although Becket receives her mail in California, seven miles from the Nevada state line, no character I know captures the eccentric spirit of the desert experience as well as she.

When Becket, 85, fell and broke her hip in October, Death Valley Junction's dancing desert spirit momentarily went silent. Then a great thing happened.

As if the ghosts of the opera house had been watching all along, Becket's friend Sandy Scheller stepped in and took the stage: Not as Becket's replacement, but as an extension of that blithe spirit.

Like Becket, Scheller has spent her life in theater and the arts. Scheller had just finished completing a video tribute and dance piece for the opera house when Becket was injured. Since then, she has balanced her work as a "Zumanity" wardrobe mistress with helping Becket rehabilitate while performing on weekends at the opera house.

"I'm proud to carry on that tradition, knowing we're on the same wave length," Scheller says. "We're kind of like 'The Golden Girls.' We're 'The Golden Amargosas.' It's probably a rebirth for me. It's given me a new life. I completely understand when Marta says to me Amargosa is one of her children."

Becket had no children of her own. After a career in dance and modeling, she wound up in Death Valley Junction after a most fortuitous flat tire in 1967. The car came to a stop a few feet from the abandoned opera house, a discarded remnant of the community's days as a bustling mining town.

She never left.

But thousands have come to her door, watched her one-woman performance, a serenade to the characters found in her murals, and been moved. Becket couldn't have found a better person to carry on the desert dance if she'd conjured Scheller herself.

"A comment I've received is, 'Is Marta your mother?'" Scheller recalls. "Absolutely not. The only thing Marta will be a mother to is her art. But do I feel like she's a sister and a mentor? One hundred percent. I can't even describe it. People that come out there, they're not looking at Sandy. Hopefully, what they're looking at is an extension of Marta.

"What is it like to follow in the footsteps of Marta Becket? Well the answer is, it feels right. It feels good. I am so blessed and grateful because this has given me such life, such an opportunity. The feeling is so indescribable because there are so many parts."

In some ways, the Amargosa Opera House is more alive than it ever was in its heyday. Scheller and "Team Marta," which includes operations director/mayor/jack-of-all trades Rich Regnell and Mary Lee Chavez, plan to keep it that way.

"It's really a spirit of Marta," Scheller says. "So far, we've had a great response. It's magic out there. It really is magic."

In 45 minutes, Scheller performs nine mural characters. In keeping with Becket's philosophy of inclusion, the murals include madams and nuns seated near each other.

With tickets priced at $15 apiece, the performances are drawing capacity crowds to the diminutive theater. Afterward, audience members tour the theater, or go to the café nearby for a slice of homemade pie.

As if called by the spirits of the murals, recent audience members have included priests and bikers, car dealer Jim Marsh and cross-country hitchhikers.

Visitors to the opera house know there's something special about those murals. Humanity is captured in the pigment. For her part, Scheller says the murals have already begun to speak to her.

Becket finished her murals four years to the day of her arrival at Death Valley Junction.

On the murals is a scroll. In Latin it reads, "The walls of this theater and I dedicate these murals to the past without which our times would have no beauty."

As one blithe spirit blends into another, it's heartening to know Marta Becket's desert dance will be there in Death Valley Junction, gently stirring the ghosts of the past and calling out to a new generation.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and twice Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.