The first thing that struck Tom Tomc about Keith Dukavicius was his resemblance to Egon Schiele. Like the Austrian painter, Dukavicius is gangly and naturally theatrical, and “his hair was standing straight up,” Tomc says. “In his self-portraits Schiele would distort his face a little bit, and then he looks even more like Keith. Keith looks like Schiele’s interpretation of himself.”
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Growing up in the Back of the Yards, Dukavicius, who’s 41, staged and filmed puppet plays with his brothers and studied music. He was seven when the family moved to south-suburban Burbank, which he says felt provincial compared to his old working-class neighborhood, and he lived “in denial of my surroundings.” In his teens he discovered Brideshead Revisited—first the miniseries and then the book—and fantasized about life in 1920s Oxford. “I was intrigued by the eccentric decadence,” he says. “It seemed like a place where foppish characters could get away with their antics.” In high school he staged a croquet match in a friend’s front yard: “I looked up the official rules and I made sure everyone wore neckties and a sports coat. I’m sure two of the players wore ascots.”
After a period working as an archivist at the Lithuanian Cultural Center near Gage Park and playing in a “post-R.E.M.” rock quartet called the Nameless, he enrolled in the Art Institute’s MFA program, doing large-format photography and video installations. One piece “involved 18th-century court music and dead flowers,” he says. “It was a mixture of Fellini and Purple Rain. I was confused.” He left the program after a year.
Dukavicius financed Egon out of pocket, again filling all of the key creative positions himself. But for his next project, Breakfast at Marly’s, a drag homage to Breakfast at Tiffany’s centering on a transvestite rock chanteuse, he hopes to work with outside producers and audition professional actors for the first time. He’s still debating whether to attempt the lead himself. “I’ve had this sad character in my head for a while, based on someone I knew from back in my clubbing days,” he says. “It’s going to be a task to pull it off. I’ve got a collection of girls’ clothes, but I’m not a weekend warrior.”v
Thu 8/14, 8 PM, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2600 or siskelfilmcenter.org. A Q&A with Dukavicius follows.
