5 - The Design of Attraction at the Stardust Showroom in Las Vegas

Summary

Chapter 5, on the showroom at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas (1958–2006), investigates the international production of theatrical revue for a tourist audience. It exemplifies the modernist design of twentieth-century theatre architecture, with an aesthetic of curved planes and smooth surfaces designed to facilitate the flow of people through performance and level the encounter between artists and spectators. We focus on the initial 1958–9 design, which accommodated the latest stage technologies, including a swimming pool, an ice rink, a waterfall, and a firework show. The Stardust became the venue for the Lido de Paris, the long-running revue, which played in various editions until 1991. Since the showroom was demolished within the Stardust in 2007, our reconstruction illustrates how theatre venues were shaped by the capitalist development of international tourism. Virtual praxis in the model embodies insight into the design of the Stardust showroom as a tourist attraction and the choreography that made a gendered spectacle of international relations.