MISTERIOSO
View the Misterioso video here
Photo by W. Eugene Smith. Courtesy of the W. Eugene Smith
Archive at the Center for Creative Photography at the
University of Arizona, & the Heirs of W. Eugene Smith
Misterioso…Happening in SeptemberThe event was called “Misterioso,” a title suggesting mystery and intrigue. It was a hint that this was not a typical theater production.
In fact, “Misterioso” director Jay O’Berski used words like “pageant” and “happening” to describe the evening performance that was offered September 26-29, 2007 at Duke’s Smith Warehouse. It was part of “Following Monk,” a series of 18 events over six weeks produced by Duke Performances to honor the 90th anniversary of the birth of North Carolina native Thelonious Monk.
“Misterioso,” named after one of Monk’s live albums, recreated the scene in a loft building on Sixth Avenue in New York where major jazz musicians, including Monk, gathered and played in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
“I thought it would be challenging to restage the loft itself,” O’Berski says.
Attendees came to “Misterioso” in the spirit of improvisation that pervaded the loft circa 1960, where on any given night Monk, Miles Davis, Salvador Dali, Diane Arbus and other characters would have been making art – and history. Visitors found a 90-minute evening of sound, video and bodies in motion that recaptured the incandescent creativity of that time. The space was filled with actors, musicians, singers and dancers, and the show was free-flowing.
“Since everything happened at once you got to choose your own adventure,” O’Berski says. “For example you might have followed just one or many stories, mixed and matched, chilled and listened to music, had drinks at the bar, engaged with performers or become a voyeur.”
The “Misterioso” project was conceived when John Clum, chair of theater studies, asked O’Berski, a lecturing fellow in the department, to direct a “jazz play” for the Monk tribute.
O’Berski had heard about the Jazz Loft Project, the Duke Center for Documentary Studies’ documentation of 3,000 hours of recordings and 40,000 photographs made by legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith of the loft scene from 1957 to 1965. This material was used by students in a jazz theater class O’Berski taught this fall. Students reviewed transcripts from interviews made by CDS of the surviving loft participants and studied music, plays and films related to the 1960s Manhattan jazz scene. All of this went into the making of “Misterioso,” O’Berski says.
“The project was massive in scope but all about the tiny details and truthful exchanges between vivid, soul-searching personalities,” O’Berski says. “I love the music, the style, the time, the experimentation with form and the uniting of different races that were components of this scene.”
Misterioso
Wednesday-Saturday, Sept. 26-29, 2007 at 8 p.m. in The Space, Smith Warehouse, 114 S. Buchanan Blvd.
$10 general admission; $5 Duke students
www.tickets.duke.edu
MISTERIOSO was part of "Following Monk: Celebrating the N.C. Legend's 90th Birthday"
www.followingmonk.org
