College of Southern Nevada Performing Arts Center

This review is for the Planetarium only.
Did you know there was a planetarium in vegas? No? Well Now you do.
This is a very small planetarium. It seats maybe 50 people. Maybe. But it wasn’t overcrowded. They do however start promptly at showtimes, you need to check with their website for start times.
It IS hard to find. The college had signs to the planetarium but none that actually said where it was. We would up going halfway around the building and returning to find it.
When we walked in the correct entrance, we STILL weren’t sure we were in the right place. Luckily a friendly staff person stuck his head around the corner and told us to follow him.
It was however a genuine planetarium with the 360 degree dome. They showed a movie perfect for little kid’s introduction to the solar system, Mystery of the Cardboard Box, and they evidently have other movies as well so perhaps we’ll go back and see another one sometime. They also showed a short film on the constellations, and another even shorter one on light pollution.
The people working there seemed very nice. My kids enjoyed it and asked a lot of pertinent questions. It was good for them AND fun!
The small gift shop had a lot of interesting little gadgets, science experiments, telescopes, etc. my kids each got something small for a couple of bucks. Nice that they had that option.
I would definitely recommend this place to people with kids. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars was that it was hard to find and we almost missed the show. I would recommend they put a large sign outside of the entrance.
4 stars.

I am just unimpressed with this campus. The whole place seems dirty and poorly maintained.

My party of four just saw College of Southern Nevada Fine Arts Department’s Spring Dance Concert 2012 at the Nicholas J. Horn Theatre on the CSN’s Cheyenne Campus. Featured were some short interpretative modern dance sketches and the ballet «Xenia Goes West.» Besides being a fine production of modern dance and a moving ballet that told the true story of Madame Xenia Chlistowa, the teen-​aged Prima Ballerina of the Kirov Ballet who was eventually captured and escaped a concentration camp to resume her professional career and ultimately reach the United States, the auditorium itself was a fine venue to host such a production. A nice fabric curtain rose to reveal a spacious, clean stage with a lip that rested below all audience sight lines except for the first three rows of seats. I was seated in the fifth row, and had a great view of the entire stage. There, corps de ballet members and featured performers danced before a large screen that depicted filmed black-​and-​white images of uniformed Nazi soldiers on the move into Russia, and some Holocaust concentration camp footage as a backdrop.
Sound and lighting were good, and seats were mostly comfortable, with cushioned surfaces but hard arm rests made of wood. About 1,000 seats filled the capacious auditorium that impressively soared to the heavens, albeit with no balcony.
It was a different and enjoyable way to spend a Saturday night.

I am a theater nerd, and I sadly don’t get enough of it living out here in Vegas. Sure, I could go spend a crap ton of money to go watch all the Cirque shows or see Phantom 14 times, but my wallet can’t really keep up. So when I had the opportunity to get some discounted tickets to see «A Midsummer Night’s Dream» performed by the Utah Shakespeare Festival at CSN, I jumped on it.
The theater of course isn’t huge, but it’s a good size for the CSN campus. Acoustics are great and there really isn’t a bad seat in the house (not a lot of seats on the edges of the theater). There is a small but nice lobby and everyone working there was very friendly and helpful.
We weren’t sure where to park so we just parked in the front of the school and walked over to the theater. There is, however, a parking lot right in front of the theater. The lot is off Community College Drive which is on the west side of the campus and north of Cheyenne. You will see the parking lot on the right hand side.
A nice spot for a date night or to get your theater fix. Maybe if you can work things out you can visit the Planetarium at CSN too and really nerd up your night.

I have been to many shows at the Performing Arts Center. There are two major theatres — the Nicholas J. Horn Theatre and the BackStage Theatre. The Horn is a large venue while the BackStage is the black box, smaller performing space.
The college presents a variety of shows from musicals to dance to dramas. Tomorrow night, I’ll be attending my first show of the new season, «Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.»
Ticket prices are very reasonable and the performances are quite good. The staff of the box office is very competent and friendly!