Against All Odds, a Vegas Theater Scene With a ‘Sense of the Wild West’

Local artists straddle aesthetic and artistic worlds in the land of mega-spectacles and oversize flash.

If there is anything most entertainers master, it’s how to juggle gigs. In New York City, they may have sidelines in real estate or hospitality. In Las Vegas, their day jobs are, well, also in entertainment.

“That’s the beautiful thing about Vegas — you’re going to find people who do everything,” said Katie Marie Jones, a busy local actress who also works as a magician’s assistant on the Vegas Strip and an on-ice host at the home games of the Golden Knights hockey team. “If you have multiple wants and talents, or if you’re open to learning new things, it’s easy building a career here because there’s so much.”

This town has been world-famous as an entertainment destination for decades, and it keeps evolving. These days the Strip hosts Cirque du Soleil spectacles and comedians, razzmatazz magicians and pop residencies. Visitors can also attend Spiegelworld’s immersive “Discoshow” and an interactive installation by the art-tainment group Meow Wolf at Area15, which is dedicated to immersive projects. Major touring musicals stop off at the Smith Center, and three major-league professional sports teams have moved in relatively recently.

What’s a lot harder to find is theater on a smaller scale, an assembly of midsize institutions that would add up to the equivalent of Off Broadway.

A homegrown professional scene does in fact exist in Las Vegas, except visitors tend not to know it because the Strip sucks up all the attention. It’s scrappy, sure, with its rock ’n’ roll energy but the theater makers here are especially resourceful and don’t fit in boxes. Over a long weekend late last fall, a few things became clear: there’s a palpable hunger to make theater against the odds, the locals who can keep it viable are ready for it and the artists enjoy the freedom of straddling aesthetic and artistic worlds.