> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://arts-of-the-working-class.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Dancing the surrounding - URL: https://arts-of-the-working-class.ghost.io/text/dancing-the-surrounding-1/ - Published: 2023-07-21T00:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-31T09:40:00.000Z - Description: A conversation between Ruth Geiersberger and Lulu Obermayer on Marta Becket’s legacy and the Death Valley Junction. - Author: Lulu Obermayer - Tags: #silverstripe *On July 7th Lulu Obermayer performed Death Valley Junction, an homage piece to Marta Becket on the stage of the HochX Theater in Munich. In 1967, the discovery of an abandoned theater in the small settlement of Death Valley Junction changed the life of Marta Becket, a Broadway dancer, choreographer, and visual artist, from the ground up. She ended her career as a touring artist and moved to Death Valley to open the Amargosa Opera House in the desert, where she lived and worked until her death in 2017\. In Death Valley Junction, Lulu Obermayer celebrates Marta Becket's legacy as an example of radical artistic practice and sheds light on consistency, perseverance, longevity, and sustainability in the performing arts. She interweaves Marta Becket's biography with her own – asking how art and life intertwine against all odds.* This conversation is the translated and edited version from the original German of the follow-up discussion by and with Ruth Geiersberger and Lulu Obermayer. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/15/d915dd2a-765c-4262-8306-869873baa8ef/content/images/2026/08/Tanztage-2022-Lulu-Obermayer-7_1340_c.jpg) **Ruth Geiersberger: For me, *Death Valley Junction* is a brilliant declaration of love for theater, or for creation as an act to see the world differently. To begin our conversation, I'd like to read you a few terms, combined with a request that you respond to them as if we were brainstorming. First term: *Max and Moritz*.** Lulu Obermayer: The very first time I went to the ballet was when I was three years old and saw *Max und Moritz*. I think it was at the Cuvilliés Theater here in Munich. I was dressed from head to toe in velvet, had Mary Janes on, and saw something I had never seen before. **At the age of three, after all, one begins to find the Self; to form memories. My first memory is of a quarrel between my parents that confused me so much that I said, "And now an earthquake is coming." Arguments between couples is a theme that has shaped me throughout my life. Second cue in brainstorming: 16 times.** Oh. I've auditioned 16 times at acting schools. You want to know more about that? **Yes.** *(Laughter in the audience)* I was 18 the first time, 21 the last time. Let's move on to the next word. **Norway.** You're really busy with my auditions. **I'm not a theater critic, and I'm not a theater scholar. I'm interested in people and their lives – just like you.** I auditioned in Norway in 2010\. There, I was told that I was too intelligent to be an actress and should become a dramaturg or director instead. So, I found the Contemporary Performance Practice program and went to Glasgow to study. **I always failed in auditions. I either did too much or too little. Whenever I was told at auditions, as you were, that I was too intelligent, too old, too young, too fat, too thin, that I already had a job or something – I thought: *I'll do it anyway*. What is it like for you?** I like to treat the theater as a mirror. For myself, having known the theater for so long and being on stage for so long, it's a form of confrontation with it. There, I meet myself there – or I meet the world. Marta Becket writes in her autobiography that she wanted to live on the other side of the curtain. I may not be as dreamy and illusory as she was, but that's how it is for me, too. I like to think about theater, it's my work and my pastime. It's always about how you construct the medium of theater and how a live moment is created. You don't have a lot of control, so it's also very much about trust. I think it's really nice that I found something that engages me like that early on. My relationship with theater is my longest and it will stay that way – I'll always be connected to it in some way. **What I like very much about your "lecture with actions," if I may call your work so, is your courage. You give us the time to observe one thing over a long time: whether it’s the picking of roses, the marking of Marta's stage, or the trickling of sand at the end. You make time visible. Today I realized, and I found this sensational, that I suddenly understood: *gravity*. There's always something that pulls you down. That sounds insanely banal now, but it gave me goosebumps: all of a sudden, you see something from a different angle. Does the sand in your piece come from Death Valley Junction or is it, as I suspect, simply bird sand?** It’s quartz sand from the hardware store, yes. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/15/d915dd2a-765c-4262-8306-869873baa8ef/content/images/2026/08/Tanztage-2022-Lulu-Obermayer-38_1340_c.jpg) **Let's talk a little bit about Marta Becket. Unfortunately, you didn't get to meet her – she died in 2017 – but you've seen all the films about her, your astrological connection plays a role in the piece; you feel very connected to her. Do you see yourself as a kind of incarnation of her?** No, I see it like this: in the astrological reading Aliza Kelly claims through our encounter, Marta is posthumously able to realize her own goals. At the same time, I have also learned so much from her. Her work was very different from what I do. She has a classical ballet training and comes from the tradition of vaudeville, a kind of cabaret version of Broadway from the turn of the 19th century where little numbers were shown, and there was dancing and singing. But what excites me about her is how dedicated she was to her artistic practice. If you got to Broadway, like she did, you made it. But she performed in the last row, and that wasn't enough for her. So she founded her own opera house in the desert where she could be the star of her own show. **I have to think of Florence Foster Jenkins – a rich heiress who loved to sing, but was very bad at it. Her singing career was based solely on her money.** Whereas Marta Becket had very little money and was professionally trained in all the disciplines she practiced. She was all about living an artistic life and that's what she did at Death Valley Junction for 50 years. How she built her own infrastructure, found her own resources, and went her own way, independent of any managers, agents, or critics –at the age of 42, when it's still getting very difficult for women in the performing arts – that was unbelievably impressive to me. **How did she live?** She made ends meet somehow. That's still the way it is for many of us in the performing arts today. I found her incredibly inspiring. Just to say, "Well, I'll open my own theater, someone will come along eventually." The perseverance. And that's what happened. Word spread quickly about what she was doing there, and people came. You think of Death Valley as such a deserted place, but the truth is, it's very touristy, and it already was back then. There's not much to do there in the evenings, so you just drive an hour to the theater. **You’ve read Becket's autobiography, To Dance on Sands: *The Life and Art of Death Valley's* Marta Becket. How does she describe her husband, Thomas Williams, in it?** My focus was on Becket as an artist and less on her relationships; I was less interested in the men around her, or as they are called: Tom 1 and Tom 2\. Her first husband cheated on her several times – certainly because she worked throughout and didn't take care of him. She was just always at the Amargosa Opera House. The cheating was very painful for her and they divorced. Tom 2 acted as a kind of janitor on-site, who also greeted guests and collected the entrance fee. It is a little unclear if they were really a couple, or just companions. **What were the pieces she performed there?** They were solo performances in which she danced and sang. At some point she recognized the comedic talent of Tom 2, and he would sometimes sit on stage in drag with her, reading the newspaper and announcing the next number. **What happened to the opera house?** The Amargosa Opera House foundation is busy figuring out how to deal with Marta Becket's legacy and securing the future of the house. As part of a tour, you can visit the Opera House every morning at 9 am and every evening at 6 pm. Performances take place from time to time, but none from Marta Becket's repertoire. But like the theater industry everywhere, the Amargosa Opera House has suffered a sharp drop in attendance since the pandemic. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d9/15/d915dd2a-765c-4262-8306-869873baa8ef/content/images/2026/08/Tanztage-2022-Lulu-Obermayer-12_1340_c.jpg) **What is your relationship to this place? Are you still drawn to it – that is, has it become a place of longing for you?** Absolutely. There are no plans at the moment, but in the long term I will definitely go there again. Maybe I'll even show my performance there. **You said earlier that you weren't interested in the men around Marta Becket. Do you generally want to give women a forum in your work?** I deal with fictional characters, but also with my female ancestors. Anne Bogart says in ‘A Director prepares’ that when you make theater, you have to know whose shoulders you're standing on. Thus, I am always looking for the women who made my own performance possible. **When are you going to get off those shoulders and say: *this is me, I don't need Marta anymore* – in other words, who is Lulu?** We all stand on someone’s shoulders and will never be able to move away from them. I did a performance about Erika Mann and Therese Ghiese, about the cabaret *Die Pfeffermühle*, which they founded in 1933 in the Bonbonniere In Munich and after Hitler’s seizure of power they had to go into exile to Zurich. In the current piece Death Valley Junction – or rather, I actually consider it a duet – I dealt with Marta Becket. In researching and reading. I always discover new protagonists, and in dealing with them and their stories I always find out a lot about myself. I know who I am and what my work is about. **As much as you stand on the shoulders of others, you do something very much your own. I was impressed by your stage design. You handle spotlights like a craftswoman. I'm thinking, for instance, of the painting that keeps spinning, which is the Death Valley Junction city limit sign.** That's exactly what Marta Becket did: she perceived her surroundings, painted and danced them. That's why it was important to me that *Death Valley Junction* becomes a painting. It's relevant to add that the piece is also a Covid work. I started it in 2020, and the premiere didn't happen until January 2022\. The lighting designer Hanna Kritten Tangsoo and I had several residencies, so we had an incredible amount of time to try out different ideas. What you see now is just a small part of what we worked on over a year and a half, and during a time when we couldn't perform. **What are you working on at the moment?** My next project is the opening of Steirischer Herbst in September, and in November I’ll premiere *Lulu* – the play and the opera I am named after. \\\\ --- ### IMAGE CREDITS Photos by Mayra Wallraff. *Lulu Obermayer works with performance, opera, theater and choreography. She engages with theater, historical facts and anecdotes in her artistic practice. For several years, she has continuously traced fictional and real female positions within and outside the canon. This year Obermayer opens the Steirischer Herbst '23: Humans and Demons with a performance about a crypto-fascist soldier's monument on the Schloßberg (in cooperation with the Graz Opera). November will see the premiere of her interpretation of Frank Wedekind's Lulu.* *Ruth Geiersberger, performer, actress and speaker, completed her training in bodywork (Feldenkrais), singing and acting in Paris, Berlin, and Munich before realizing her own projects.*