BY LUCIA MAURO
|
“Alice
in Wonderland
was very influential,” says Tekki Lomnicki. “I liked that Alice could change her size anytime she wanted to.” |
 |
For the co-founder/artistic director of Chicago’s Tellin’ Tales
Theatre, Lewis Carroll’s perspective-altering story was more than
an imaginative fantasy. As a little person, Lomnicki must deal with size
issues on a daily basis. But theatre has provided the most fertile ground
for her talents as a writer, actor and teacher to grow. A respected solo
artist—who crafts her own pungent, funny and non-self-pitying material—she
has pared down the monologue form to its human essence.
Lomnicki, along with four fellow solo artists, perform accounts of personal
stories that have taken unexpected turns in Tellin’ Tales Theatre’s
Detours, running through June 29 at Victory Gardens Theater. In it, she
focuses on her father’s experiences in the Navy during World War
II. But the piece, which addresses her dad’s death in 1989, really
explores the notion of grief coming in waves and how our memories remain
safest in our own hearts.
The artist had this epiphany almost two years ago when, due to a mix-up
on the part of her building’s management, a storage container with
all the cherished belongings of her father (like photographs and an accordion)
was accidentally thrown away. “I was devastated,” recounts Lomnicki,
46. “Then the next day, Sept. 11 happened—and that taught me
the biggest lesson about things. Sometimes all you have are the memories,
and you have to accept that.”
Lomnicki, who grew up in a supportive Polish-Catholic household in Elmhurst,
calls her father Eddie one of her first storytelling mentors. Between
infancy and the age of 13, she underwent several orthopedic surgeries
to correct clubbed feet and lengthen her Achilles tendons. At the time,
the hospital would not allow her parents to stay overnight. But her fearless
dad—who came to visit after the long hours he put in at the garment
factory he owned in Wicker Park—would “swear his way in”
and proceed to share stories about the colorful cast of characters in
his business.
He also encouraged his daughter to take risks: “My father would throw
me in the water for a crash-course in swimming,” Lomnicki laughs.
“It didn’t matter to him that I had a disability. I played baseball
with my two brothers [Eddie and Wally, whom she has portrayed in her one-woman
shows]. I played soccer on crutches.”
In fact, Lomnicki—while fully aware of the challenges she would encounter
as a person with a disability—continued to meet instrumental individuals
who helped her push aside those barriers. Her mother Dolores, although
protective, instilled in her a deep faith—evident in Lomnicki’s
strong attachment to the Roman Catholic church, whose pageantry she says
is very theatrical. She recently served on the planning committee when
Old St. Mary’s Church moved from downtown to the South Loop.
Sister Mary Thecla, a Catholic nun at Park Ridge’s Resurrection Hospital
(where Lomnicki had her surgeries), spent many hours telling stories about
her family’s life in Poland: “She was the best storyteller in
the world,” enthuses Lomnicki. “I pictured her as Maria from
The Sound of Music. And that’s how I started telling my own stories.
I would imitate Sister Mary Thecla.”
But, over the years, she would find her own voice while cultivating an
intense of love of theatre. Her Uncle Tim insisted she write down her
stories. He also took Lomnicki and her two brothers to downtown Chicago
theatres to see musicals like Hello, Dolly! and 1776. Uncle Tim even helped
the kids write and star in homemade radio dramas using a reel-to-reel
tape recorder. Today, as an instructor at Gallery 37, Lomnicki has her
young students—with and without disabilities—work in the radio-drama
format. “It’s great,” she says, “because they don’t
have to do a lot of movement, and the kids who are non-verbal can be in
charge of the sound effects.”
Lomnicki reached her own crucial turning point at Elmhurst’s York
Community High School, where she met Les Zunkel, the drama director who
believed anyone could perform on stage. Zunkel cast Lomnicki in musicals
like Guys and Dolls and Anything Goes, as well as the lead in the play
Minnie’s Boys, in which she portrayed Mrs. McNish, the Marx Brothers’
landlady.
“Mr. Zunkel taught me how to direct,” she explains. “He
had a really good sense of blocking and could put 100 people on stage
and make each one of them shine.”
Zunkel—who served as the president of Tellin’ Tales Theatre’s
board for four years—recently retired from York Community High School,
and Lomnicki coordinated a retrospective-performance in his honor.
Interestingly, Lomnicki did not pursue theatre at Rosary College (now
Dominican University) in River Forest, where she received her BA in English.
She loved theatre, but didn’t think she could make it a career. Lomnicki
also got discouraged when she asked if she could help out in the college’s
theatre department, and one of the directors told her they needed someone
to run the slide projector.
She focused on her writing instead and, after she graduated, Lomnicki
went on to a successful career as an advertising copywriter for Marshall
Field’s and Spiegel—and found time to perform with Elmhurst
Community Theatre. She continues to freelance for clients like LensCrafters
and Sears.
In 1987, she took a writing-performance workshop taught by Donna Blue
Lachman at Blue Rider Theatre (which recently closed)—and it changed
her life. “The universe somehow clicks into place,” quips Lomnicki.
“That’s how my life works.”
It was here that she became enthralled with the idea of transforming storytelling
into an all-encompassing theatre experience—with lights and music.
Lomnicki perfected her wry comedic skills and ability to embody a character.
She co-wrote and performed in Passing On at Blue Rider. She also self-produced
another show there. And the experience prompted two major influences in
her life to converge.
“Mr. Zunkel was in the audience,” shares Lomnicki, “and,
before the show, I felt like I needed some words of wisdom. He told me,
'Knock 'em dead.’ Then I asked Donna Blue—and she
told me to 'think of [the audience] as empty and fill them up with
light.’”
Lomnicki also performed in Twisted Richard at Blue Rider and, in 1993,
teamed up with Michael Blackwell to create her breakthrough performance
piece—complete with puppets and visual effects—When Heck Was
a Puppy: The Living Testimonies of Folk Artist Edna Mae Brice, the inaugural
production of Tellin’ Tales Theatre.
Other story-based creations for Tellin’ Tales include Honor Thy Mother,
Alchemy, Tall Tales & Small Miracles, Honor Thy Father, 2001: A Wedding
Odyssey and Sibling Revelry. She has appeared in Lexis Praxis at Zebra
Crossing, Activities of Daily Living with Remains/Blue Rider; and Genetic
Material for the Live Bait Fillet of Solo Festival. Tekki also adapted
and directed Old Love Letters I Keep in my Underwear Drawer, produced
at the Bailiwick. She most recently performed with Susan Nussbaum in Nussbaum’s
Parade at Estrogen Fest.
In 1994 and 1995, Lomnicki directed the Tellin’ Tales Magic City
Theatre Camp for kids with and without disabilities, a program developed
by Maggie Daley. She now teaches Storytelling Theatre and Radio Drama
for the Gallery 37 Connections Program at various parks and schools, and
has worked with Live Bait Theater coaching unwed pregnant teenagers at
the Madonna St. Joseph Center.
Her annual project Six Stories Up, pairs six well-known storytellers with
six Chicago school children in a mentoring program and subsequent productions
held so far at the Blue Rider Theatre in October 1998, 2000, 2001 and
2002, plus Victory Gardens in 1999. The cast and crew are a diverse mix
of race, gender and ability. The next Six Stories Up will gather tales
from children in area hospitals.
In the future, Lomnicki envisions opening a theatre school in Elmhurst
to provide after-school classes in acting, improvisation and writing for
children of all ages, with adult acting classes as well.
Her work continues to deepen and become more minimalist. “I think
my style has developed from being able to strip away the trappings of
me,” she explains, “of stripping away the idea of having to
apologize for myself or worry what I look like. Once I realized that,
I didn’t need slides or big sets. I just wanted it to be me and to
use my own body to become characters.”
Lomnicki, who felt she had to create her own path in theatre, believes
there are more opportunities today for artists with disabilities but finds
that little people continue to struggle for acceptance, especially in
films that portray them in a comedic way. She is not a fan of the popular
film character, “Mini Me.” And she opposes “tokenism”
in the theatre in which a person with a disability is cast purely for
politically correct reasons.
“We don’t want to just be put in a show,” she stresses.
“We have to be part of the work; we want to have a voice. As a writer,
I have the power to create roles where little people are your next door
neighbor or your doctor or lawyer.”
Lomnicki is a member of the Theatre Access Coalition, a group of theatre
professionals dedicated to making theatre accessible for people with disabilities.
And she spends a lot of time educating children about this.
When asked about other ways she can help change perceptions of persons
with disabilities, Lomnicki replies without hesitation: “I guess
just by living my life. I’d like to heal one person at a time.”
Theatre, which allowed her to tap into her own multifaceted qualities,
is what she believes “makes my life worthwhile.” She acknowledges,
“It feels like I’m making a difference in the world in some
small way.”