Halloween festival in the middle of nowhere

Friday, Oct. 19, 2007 | 7:34 a.m.

The Goldwell Open Air Museum has had ambitious plans for its home adjacent to the ghost town of Rhyolite , just outside of Beatty.

The biggest project for the remote site near Death Valley and its collection of large sculptures is creating an artist-in-residence program in a nearby barn.

Just when you think it's all a pipe dream, another event comes along to show that the folks at Goldwell aren't kidding.

This weekend there will be a Halloween arts festival , called Albert's Tarantella, that includes performances by Cockroach Theatre and Threshold Dance Theater, an exhibit of cinematic portraits of horror films and local flavor provided by Rodney Leach, a singer from Beatty.

The festival will be held Saturday night in the Red Barn on the property, 115 miles north of Las Vegas, as part of the Halloween celebration and to showcase recent work on the barn that was donated to the nonprofit museum in 2005 by Barrick Gold Corp., which operated the Barrick Bullfrog Mine, and will be used for the program. The barn is about two-thirds complete. It has a 1,125-square-foot multipurpose studio for visual artists, dance and theater workshops, and a small printing studio with an etching press.

Exhibits, lectures, films, Kymaerica events - where artist Eames Demetrios maps out a fictional world - and restoration projects have already taken place at Goldwell during the past few years. The area became an arts site in the 1980s when Belgian artist Charles Albert Szukalski created large-scale sculptures, including his life-size ghostly rendition of da Vinci's "The Last Supper."

William Adamson, artistic director for Cockroach Theatre, says the site is perfect for the company's performance of "The Methuselah Tree."

Cockroach does site-specific theater. In 2003 it presented a psychological thriller in the back lot of the downtown Funk House. A 2004 production was held in a junkyard.

"The Methuselah Tree," written by company member Jayme McGhan, takes place in a basement laboratory and involves a metaphysical scientist seeking to create a bionic soul. It was recently presented at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in Minneapolis and last month in Las Vegas.

Cockroach created a claustrophobic space built into one corner of the barn for the 53-minute play. Placing the cast and audience in such an environment can create a powerful sense of place, Adamson says. "It literally draws the audience right into that world."

Details: "Albert's Tarantella," 7 p.m.-midnight Saturday, the Red Barn at Goldwell Open Air Museum, $20 in advance, $30 at the door, www.goldwellmuseum.org.

Penthouse party

With the city of Las Vegas changing the way it supports First Friday, Whirlygig Inc., the nonprofit group that operates the monthly event in the Arts District, is starting to think big. Party in the Penthouse, its fifth year anniversary fundraiser, will be held in a Soho Loft penthouse overlooking the Arts District. A $50 ticket to the party in the two-story loft includes drinks, food, live music, dance and a performance by New American Theatre Project. A silent auction includes works donated by artists Mike Wardle, Jerry Misko, Ripper Jordan and Marty Walsh. Nancy Higgins, executive director of Whirlygig, says the group spends about $200,000 a year to present the monthly events. The city has contributed infrastructure for First Friday, but will focus its support on the street festival during the busy months of spring and fall, leaving Whirlygig to pick up expenses such as portable toilets. "They eventually want us to be self-sustaining as a nonprofit," Higgins says. Whirlygig board member Amy Schmidt says Whirlygig hopes to raise $25,000 from Thursday's fundraiser. "We want to make sure this festival experience that we've all come to know and love continues and grows."

Details: Party in the Penthouse, 7-11 p.m. Thursday, Sam Cherry's Soho Lofts, $50 in advance, $75 at the door, www.firstfriday-lasvegas.org.