Most garages have their fair share of clutter, but step inside Leata Lawniczak’s two-car garage and it’s like stepping onto a stage.
Owner of Golden Apple Productions, a five-year-old children’s theater company, Lawniczak has more stage scenery, props and costumes in her garage and basement than tools and lawn equipment.
In one corner, a giant mouth from a play about dental hygiene leans against a wall. In another spot, she is in the process of painting a life-size teepee for an upcoming Thanksgiving play. And just next to that, thousands of tiny green napkins stapled to some chicken wire make a pretty believable tree top.
In fact, the Schaumburg resident needs nothing more than a couple of cardboard tubes, some tissue paper, pipe cleaner and a box and she can go to work creating a corn field.
All it takes is a little imagination and a lot of time.
“I just come up with ideas,” said the 41-year-old mother of two boys. “And I save everything.”
Lawniczak buys things like fabric remnants, foam sponges, and yarn at garage sales knowing that somewhere down the line she will work them into one of her educational plays geared for elementary students.
But her creative mind is used on more than just costumes and scenery. Lawniczak has spent the last two months writing with friend, Sue Campbell, her latest production called, “Green Corn Dance,” a Thanksgiving play told from the Native American point of view.
“It has a lot of Indian folklore in it,” she said.”The whole premise behind it is to teach sharing and caring for other people.”
It’s a credo Lawniczak has followed in her own life by caring for the elderly and being a minister to the sick through her local parish.
She says the idea for a children’s theater company popped up several years ago when her oldest son, now a college freshman, was in a play in the 6th grade and the teachers needed help putting it together. Although she had never acted or written anything before, she gave it her best shot.
“I took a fractured Mother Goose play and rewrote the beginning and the ending,” she said. “The teacher loved it. It was fun, and I got to do some costuming.”
Out of three plays produced by Lawniczak and presented at the Schaumburg Prairie Arts Center, “Tommy Tooth” seems to have taken children by storm. The play, in which Lawniczak plays the Tooth Fairy, involves crazy characters like C.C. Incisor, Catherine Cuspid and the sinister “D.K.” in a musical production.
