THE STARLIGHT THEATRE
Still Dishing it up Terlingua-Style
by Phyllis Dunham
S
o, I’m sitting at the bar at the
Starlight one night listening to
some excellent live music and fin-
ishing up my meal when I hear, “You
stayin’ after dinner, Phyllis? Sandy’s gonna
be on the silks tonight.” Now, I may not
know what the “silks” are, and I barely
know Sandy, but I’m pretty gosh-darned
certain I’m in for a good time. This is, after
all, the Starlight. This is where I go for the
serendipitous and unexpected. I order a
margarita and sit back.
Sandy is a Starlight waitress, and, it
turns out, the silks are giant red sashes
hanging down a good 30 feet from the
ceiling of the stage. It also turns out that
Sandy will climb these giant red sashes,
and, by twisting them around her ankles
and wrists and various other body parts,
she will put on an aerial show that is part
ballet, part Cirque du Soleil, part pole
dance, part flying, part contortionism
and 100 percent graceful athleticism –
all without a safety device. This is a
whole new realm of curtain-climbing.
And the charge for this entertainment?
Nothing. Nada. Zip. It’s free. And I did-
n’t even have to buy dinner. Welcome to
a fairly typical evening at the Terlingua
Ghost Town’s Starlight Theatre.
Pull into the dusty, crater-strewn park-
ing lot in front of the Starlight on just
about any given evening of the fall, winter
or spring, and you’ll feel the buzz in the air.
Locals and tourists are strung all along the
famous front porch sitting, standing, talk-
ing, having a cold one, some strumming
guitars, some singing and some still staring
toward the dying display of sunset color
on the distant Chisos Mountains. Step
past the funky-beautiful façade of the old
adobe building, and you’ll enter a world of
color and sound, flavor and texture and
culture and encounter.
The Starlight is a saloon and restau-
rant now, but it really was a movie the-
ater back in the 30s. Built of adobe and
completed in 1931, it was a place for
showing films and bringing culture to
the desert for the citizens of the once-
thriving mining town. After a few busts,
the building sat, abandoned and roof-
less, for decades before owner Bill Ivey
decided to keep it from deteriorating fur-
ther. Some locals, accustomed to show-
10
Photo courtesy Starlight Archives
From left, chef Diego Palacios, manager Jason Barrett and Starlight owner Bill Ivey.
ing and watching movies under a starlit
sky inside the adobe walls, were initially
disturbed when Bill set about re-roofing
the building, but he was determined to
keep the historic adobe from collapsing
altogether. The new, stabilizing roof
structure was completed 20 years ago,
just in time for its first event: Bill and
Lisa Ivey’s wedding celebration.
Unwavering in his resolve to preserve
as much of the building’s history as pos-
sible, Bill made sure the interior walls
were merely scrubbed back to their orig-
inal, pock-marked, pale orange stucco
and retouched no further. He also pre-
served the faded mural, painted by
Frank X. Tolbert during a long-ago chili
cook-off, on the back wall of the stage by
furring out an additional wall. The cur-
rent mural of campfire-lit cowboys
under a West Texas sky was actually
painted by Stylle Read on the new wall
while the Tolbert mural remains
untouched behind it.
Around that time, locals Rob and
Angie Dean approached Bill about
opening a bar and restaurant in the old
adobe structure. They named it the
Starlight Theatre in honor of its past as
a movie house both with a roof and
without, and they put together a menu
that they hoped would draw tourists and
locals alike. They served their famous
Cenizo
First Quarter 2012
“bowl of beans” to provide hearty fare
for those on the tightest of budgets and
made sure that a good portion of the
menu would please the fussiest of
tourists as well. Then they built a rectan-
gular bar in the middle of the space,
and, because the theater floor sloped
toward the stage in the rear of the build-
ing, the Starlight’s peculiar bar was
waist-high on the front end and nose-
high on the back side. The dance area
near the stage was sloped, too, but that
never stopped anybody from cutting a
rug if the mood struck. The Starlight
Theatre was off and running.
Because few indoor spaces existed
where a crowd of Terlinguans could
gather, the Starlight immediately became
a community center in addition to its
duties as a bar and restaurant. Weddings
and meetings were held there, and when-
ever the local school presented the kids’
Christmas program at the Starlight the
staff removed all the liquor from the bar.
The Deans always saw the Starlight as a
place where locals could find a sense of
community. To that end Angie and Rob
created one other tradition that is still
intrinsic in the Starlight’s spirit – they
made a commitment to showcase local
talent for their clientele. As a result, the
Starlight has a 20-year tradition of pro-
viding local music and entertainment
while seldom charging a cover.
Not that famous outside talent hasn’t
also graced the Starlight stage – or vied
to at any rate. Bill Ivey was surprised
when he realized that big-deal musicians
consider it an addition to their hip- and
street-cred to have played the Starlight.
Among those you might have seen there
at one time or another are Steven
Fromholz, the legendary Flatlanders,
Willie Nelson and, famously, Jerry Jeff
Walker – back in the roofless days. Viva
Terlingua!
The famous aside, the most singular
quality of the Starlight’s unique brand of
entertainment is its quirkiness and vari-
ety. During the years when Chad
Tinney ran the joint, there was a swim-
ming pool on the dance floor for a while,
until the smell of chlorine proved too
overpowering for staff and clientele. At
one point there was also a volleyball
court, complete with sand floor. Then
there was the time a small circus came to
town and ended up playing the Starlight
for a month, the legacy of which is that
some locals trained with the circus per-
formers and took up juggling, fire-danc-
ing and such. Those trainees now occa-
sionally perform at the Starlight them-
selves. Remember Sandy and the silks?
And since Terlinguans have a knack for
entertaining themselves, local theater
groups provide original comedy produc-
tions from time to time.
Terlinguans are also renowned, or
should be, for their resourcefulness in
putting together charity events, and the
Starlight’s current manager, Jason
Barrett, takes advantage of that fact for
the good of the charities and for the
sheer fun of it, too. The Free-Box
Fashion Show was a major hit last year.
Benefitting a variety of local charities,
the show featured local “models” wear-
ing, well, free stuff, some of which came
right out of the exchange box on the
Study Butte Store porch. Dolled up with
elaborate coiffures, makeup and acces-
sories, the models were primed for the
catwalk – a stage extension that jutted
out over the sloping dance floor. As the
crowd cheered, and the models strutted
to the pounding music and worked their
outfits, raucous bidders vied for the
ensembles, some of which sold for hun-
dreds of dollars.