She plans to perform as scheduled this weekend, leaving moments of silence during "Wilget's" parts and asking audience members to use their imaginations. Instead of a show Saturday night, April 16, Becket gave a tearful tribute to Mr. Willett's daughters, Gaila Hunt, helps out at the hotel. She intends to carry on as a one-woman show, she said. He took tickets before productions, working the crowds like a carnival barker.īecket said she views him as irreplaceable. Willett also worked on sets and helped with repairs. Right," and took on various guises in the current production, "Masquerade."īesides appearing on stage, Mr. He played Cupid in Becket's "Cupid's Mistake," wore a sunbonnet for a female part in "Looking for Mr. "He should have been in show business all his life." "He was a natural comedian," Becket said Tuesday. He danced with his broom when sweeping up. Willett tooled around the ghost town on a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, emitting odd barking noises to amuse himself and the occasional passer-by, wishing people "Merry Christmas" on the Fourth of July, and vice versa, just to defy expectations. Willett were close partners on and off stage, and for many years were the only full- time residents of an area that can make the touristy parts of Death Valley seem crowded. Willett co-starred in virtually every production since his arrival, despite two left feet and his penchant for calling the ballet tutu he sometimes had to wear a "four-four." He went by the stage name "Wilget," coined by his children.Īlthough they always lived in separate houses, Becket and Mr. A documentary on Becket, "Amargosa," was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000. Real audiences were sparse for years, but lately the shows have attracted wide publicity as one of the most offbeat performance venues anywhere, made all the more powerful by the austere setting. She painted elaborate murals on the walls, including faces of a Renaissance crowd in the back of the theater, and poetic scripts in Latin. She came through the Death Valley area on a road trip and decided to bring a dusty old borax mining complex to life, with her own unique artistic vision. Becket, 80, was a New York ballerina in the 1960s.
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