What lurks in ‘Into the Mist’? Flappers, blackjack dealers and so much more from Roaring ’20s
Last Friday night, and the past came calling at 9 p.m.
More accurately I called the past, by logging into a website that allowed me to travel to 1927, and this is just some of what I saw and heard: “Josephine Baker” dancing in an apartment; a blackjack dealer of quick wit and winning ways; a woman doing the Charleston; a flapper or two; a pair of improvisers; a man telling me about the “genius of Edison” and saying “but he was not a kind or gentle man”; a flask labeled “milk”; a five piece band and a woman mixing cocktails.
I would later learn that I missed a few things, such as “Ernest Hemingway” and “Dorothy Parker” arguing for an hour; “Langston Hughes” reading; a “Ritzy Rags” fashion show and a magician.
Still, after an hour and a half I was tremendously satisfied and suitably intrigued. By taking this trip, I not only thrilled in visiting the past and seeing some stunning live performances but may have also gotten a glimpse of the future.
This package comes in the form of a wildly creative concoction called “Into the Mist,” which is delivered for the modest price of $16 and is unlike any computer-made entertainment I have seen in this age of computer-inspired inventiveness.
There have been many arts and entertainment outfits that have been, with varying degrees of success, trying to figure out how to use the internet to keep their audience attached and entertained. Theaters have been shuttered and music clubs closed but I and others have been able to watch singers, dancers, actors and others do their best to keep the arts alive.
Zoom has boomed and though it plays a part in “Into the Mist,” this a vastly different and more expansive form.
It was created by Steve Rashid, who lives in Evanston with his wife, Béa. He has been a creative fixture here as a composer, producer, recording engineer and performer. He has written music for movies, TV and made CDs. He runs Studio 5, a performing arts center.
A couple of days after my “Into the Mist” excursion, he told me, “After the pandemic hit I was trying to figure out how to make a livestreamed concert more engaging. I knew I wanted to present a livestream of a band playing music from the 1920s, and who better than one of my favorite bands, the Chicago Cellar Boys. It’s the Midwest’s premier 1920s jazz and hot dance band and its members pride themselves on being fully authentic to the times without being a museum piece.”
Wanting to give the band and its music some context, he decided to precede the band’s set with an online exploration of the era, because he believes that music is a reflection of “its time and culture.” In so doing he hoped “that the music would resonate more than usual” and thus was born what he describes as this “live, online and immersive 1920s experience.”
The first to hop aboard was Béa Rashid, a choreographer, dance educator and theatrical director. She is the director of Dance Center Evanston and founder of the Evanston Dance Ensemble.
Then he approached their sons, Daniel and Robert. They loved the idea.
More calls were made, to the network of the many creative people that the Rashid family knows.
Spread across the country, all of them began to offer ideas and craft performance pieces.
More than 20 performers are currently involved. You can see them and read about their credits on the “Into the Mist” website. Any Chicago theatergoer is likely to recognize some names, such as Paul Barrosse and Victoria Zielinski, once members of the Practical Theater Company that gave birth to many delightful shows in the 1980s and helped launch more than a few careers, Rashid was its musical director, most prominently that of a talented actor named Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
These cast members occupy 15 “stages,” which are in the form of rooms or hallways that you can enter and stay for however long you’d like. They comprise a total of 14 hours of live entertainment being offered during the first hour of “Into the Mist” and so most people, I am told and so I did, move about.
At 10 p.m., all are instructed to move into the “club” for a 30-minute live concert by the band.
The experience is “part game, part puzzle, part interaction, part entertainment,” Rashid says. “One of the delights of this is that it is difficult to describe. It is also difficult to find something to compare it to. I have never seen anything like it.”
Neither have I. But I will tell you that is great fun once you find your internet footing, at which point it becomes easy to move from floor to floor and room to room.
“Into the Mist” launched with four shows in January, gathering such comments from its audience members as “This evening is simply the cat’s pajamas!”
There are four shows this month, and then:
“We will take a break, reassess,” says Rashid. “One of the things that has worked to our advantage is that all of our performers weren’t working and didn’t have anything else to do. That’s one of the bad things too. We’ll have to see where the world is, where they are in April or May.”
It has certainly been a rewarding family venture.
“It’s one of the most fulfilling things I have ever been part of,” says 27-year-old Daniel, and actor, writer, producer, video game designer and graphic artist living in Los Angeles. “It’s a beautiful thing to experience, with a real communal feeling. By the time everyone gets into the club near the end of the night, I find myself genuinely moved by the whole experience.”
You will get to “meet” 31-year-old Robert, who lives and works here in music and finance. In the show he’s the blackjack dealer and says, “To collaborate not only with my mom and dad and brother but all of these other artists has been amazing. So many of them haven’t been able to work this year and they have taken to this with such enthusiasm. It’s invigorating.”
As innovative, dreamlike and futuristic as “Into the Mist” might seem, at the core, it’s personal for their dad, who says, “One of the greatest joys of this is that I get to talk to my boys every day.”
The shows are not archived. You can’t have a look. Each Friday night comes a show that is very much of the moment and of this time. As the saying goes, “You had to be there,” and I’m coming back to watch Barrosse and Zielinsk duke it out as Hemingway and Parker. Now, that’s something you won’t see every day.
“Into the Mist” runs 9 p.m. Fridays; tickets $16 at www.intothemist.net
