Duke Found Inspiration for ‘Lost’

Lisa Duke is so proud of her relationship with her uncle, the late composer-songwriter Vernon Duke, that she’s written a show about it.

She has structured her one-woman production of “Lost & Found”--which she will perform tonight at 8 at the Itchey Foot Cabaret in downtown Los Angeles--around a series of letters to him.

“The show takes place on the cusp of my 30th birthday,” she says. “I’m writing to Vernon Duke as a kind of personal role model, describing my efforts to bring all the aspects of my life into the same kind of focus that he achieved with his music.

“I think what’s been most inspiring to me about him, totally aside from the fact that he’s a relative, is the way he integrated the two completely different sides of his creative life. I mean, his classical works were performed by the Boston Symphony and the Ballets Russe, and at the same time he was writing songs like ‘I Can’t Get Started’ and ‘Cabin in the Sky’ for Broadway.”

The Chicago-born Duke studied acting in New York, but has been a Los Angeles resident since the age of 9. Self-identified as an actress-singer-comedian-writer, she has done commercials, TV and “every comedy place in L.A., from the Second City and Off the Wall to the Groundlings and the Improv.”

But her aspiration of the moment is the connection of her creativity with her heritage.

“If I can get my life together half as well as he did, I figure I’ll be doing pretty well.”