Vito Leanza
@vitoworldproductions in his studio.
-Visual-
I was not prepared for the amazing studio I walked into as I came into Vito’s house. He is a puppet-master extraordinaire and had transformed his puppet shop into mask-making central.
I received the grand tour and got thoroughly caught up on his mask enterprise and his puppet work before we got on the record.
As you read, imagine the two of us surrounded by patterns, foam, sewing machines, and two cute puppies as he sews with two sets of readers on and I sit on my spiny chair with notebook in hand.
Interviewed 6.2.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: First and foremost, how are you?
Vito: Actually, emotionally, I'm perfectly fine.
Casey: Yeah?
Vito: Yeah. I'm usually alone all day, all the time. So it hasn't affected me in the way it is affecting a lot of people. I don't have a 9 to 5. I'm not used to going somewhere every single day. I did when I first moved here, but for 15 years before that it was, again, me in my apartment in my work room. Plus, I have these two dogs. And at night when my son's home from work, I have my son. I'm normally a very strong, positive person anyway. This hasn't been hard because it's sort of just my norm. But I do miss my chorus. I do miss going to the Puppet Center once a week and working. I do miss Stone Mountain because, you know, we didn't open. I lost all that rehearsal and shows for the spring and so far the summer. I don't know when they're gonna open.
I'm not struggling financially, really, only because I got unemployment. And these masks have also helped. Let's say I've made about $3,500. I've given a lot away. But I added it up the other day, and if I had made people pay for all the ones I actually made, I should have made close to $7,500, which is a lot of money. I was like "Damn, I didn't make that much money because I keep giving away." And I'm spending all my money buying more materials.
Casey: So it sounds like you've been staying busy.
Vito: I'm completely busy. My life has been making these masks or a lot of time out in my yard. I replaced my fence. I moved some drainage pipes. I painted my back deck. I put all new mulch on the flower beds. I have to mow the damn lawn every week. So it's either been outside or in this room.
Then at night, I'll go upstairs and cook dinner and be done at, a lot of times 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 at night. I don't have the pressure right now that I did when I first started these masks. I made those masks for my friend at the Puppet Center and she posted it. Then all of a sudden people were like, "Vito, we need masks!" and I got over a hundred masks ordered within three days. And so up until literally two days ago, I have been playing catch up because everyday people are ordering more. I got three orders today. It's slowed down considerably, which is great, but because I've been so busy, like my normal life, it hasn't really affected me. I keep having to go to the store for food and for more supplies. So I don't feel like I'm missing life. Life hasn't really stopped for me. I don't get the opportunity to sit down like everybody else is and watch Netflix all day long.
Casey: I mean, you could.
Vito: I could.
Casey: You're choosing not to.
Vito: Yeah.
Casey: Do you think that's to keep yourself sane?
Vito: No, I'm choosing not to because I know how important these masks are because they're a life-saving situation. It's not like someone's ordered a puppet from me and I have months to build it or I can come up with an excuse and say, "Oh, it'll be there in another week or whatever." I feel a lot of pressure with these because I know people need them for their safety.
Even so, I have these two puppets behind you. You see them? These I started working on a long time ago. I was going to dedicate the last two days to finishing them, but then I got more mask orders and I'm like, "My friends don't really need these (puppets), but my other friends need those masks."
Casey: That's very noble of you.
Vito: But I do take time for myself. Like yesterday, I finished that pile of masks over there and at 4:00 I took the dogs to the park, and we went to Kennessaw Mountain and we walked for two hours. So I certainly give myself revival time, if you will, or whatever the word is.
Casey: Did you take time like that before?
Vito: Mmhmm. Usually, I vacation a lot and that's my downtime away from this room. Otherwise, this room and my business in general, for the past 20 years, has almost always got something in it. But for some reason, I have not had one hired job since the end of January. It was that limousine for Macy's and this mascot over here of that duck. The last job I had was that duck. Then my work just sort of stopped. I was actually happy about that because it's been boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom all the time. And with me throwing things in — like working at Stone Mountain and working at the Puppet Center — this room will suffer. My son will suffer. So I was actually so excited to have nothing to do.
Casey: How is your son doing with all of this?
Vito: He's fine. He's normally home all the time.
Casey: How old is he?
Vito: He's gonna be 20 soon. Normally he's just home, except for when he goes to work. When this whole thing started, all of a sudden he didn't want to be home, and I was like, "Leo, you have to stay home." I would make him wash his hands as soon as he got home. I finally bought him baby wipes that are in his car. He doesn't really have friends because he came through the foster system. It's really just been me and him, and he has a cousin that lives here. But he's been fine. As long as he's working, he's fine. Otherwise, he sits on the couch and plays video games.
Casey: How are you finding the motivation to create right now? You're making masks and that's keeping you very, very busy, and you've obviously done some massive prep work for some other projects. Is there any difference in your motivation?
Vito: Not for me because this is what I do. … I'm usually very motivated if I'm in this room.
Casey: So it sounds like this hasn't really affected you at all.
Vito: I mean, yes and no. Financially, I'm OK. Emotionally, I'm fine. But I am also a very grounded, spiritual person. I've been putting my phone here or my iPad, not just watching Netflix, but I've been watching a lot of my spiritual leaders talk. I tend to stay off of Facebook almost all the time. I will get on Facebook in the morning when I wake up. I will be on Facebook a couple of times during the day. When I get bored, I'll just grab the phone and be like, "What's going on on Facebook?" I'll read maybe 10 posts. Then they're so depressing, I just turn off the Facebook. I don't watch the news ever. So I didn't know there was a curfew until it was the day after the curfew happened. So I sometimes don't get my information in time unless somebody alerts me to it. …
My sister lives down the street and she always wants to come over and play because she's bored and I was like, "I'm not bored." That's the thing. I'm never bored because I've had so many projects, even if it's just house projects. I've never been bored where I'm going crazy. This is just sort of my life, you know? The only time I got lonely was before this all happened and that's because my boyfriend and I broke up. I never knew I was lonely before, and then I broke up with him and it was like I didn't realize that I'm actually a lonely person. But because I'm always so busy, I guess I don't have time to notice that I'm lonely. Lonely for that part of my life. Because when we broke up, we were hanging out a lot and we were doing a lot of things together. I was making more time in my life. I was stopping work earlier or working harder and faster so I could have more time with him. Once that ended, I (realized) that I really don't have a lot of friends I could just call up and hang out with. I don't have friends I can just call and say, "Hey, let's go to a movie." With him, that's what we would do. I don't have friends I can go to restaurants with, especially because of where I live. Most of my friends live in Midtown. That's why I love being in the chorus because I at least once a week have 100 people I get to spend three hours with, and then after we'll go out and have drinks and have fun. But before I joined the chorus, I never went to a bar. I would work all day, either at the Puppet Center or I'd be home. Very occasionally, rarely, I would meet somebody and go to dinner or something.
Casey: This has been very enlightening for me as a person who has worked with you, I'm understanding so much more about you, in a good way. What do you think you'll take out of this time? What do you think you've learned? What do you hope the world has learned?
Vito: I don't think the world is learning. Unfortunately, I think there are very select people who are learning that this time is a gift. You have to look at it that way. I'm not a doomsday type of person. We're just gonna use the breakup as an example. That relationship was very short — it was only three-and-a-half months — but it was incredibly intense. What came out of that was I learned what I deserved. I did not deserve some of the things I had to go through with this man, and I didn't put up with a lot of stuff either. So I learned that, "Hey, this guy is a great person. He's probably not for me because he's not giving me what I'm giving him." I learned how to respect myself more in terms of that situation.
Now, in terms of the world learning, I've asked the question several times on Facebook, like, "People, what are you doing to better yourselves? This time is truly a gift." My sister is an example. She was making more money on unemployment than she was at her job. She was able to catch up with her bills. But did she learn how to budget? I doubt it. She's back to work. She's probably suffering again because she's making less money. She works at a hair salon. Like I said, when I watched those videos, I took a lot of time to check in with my spiritual leaders and listen to what they had to say. So for me personally, I didn't see this as a tragedy. I saw it as an opportunity to figure out what other things I want to do with my life. This is why I was happy in February when I had no work in here. I already knew that 20 years of this is enough for me. I'm an actor and I may not be the best actor in the world, but I have so many other creative outlets that I'm trying to work on. But I constantly get pulled into this room. Like those puppets. They're not just for my friends. They're also for a TV show that we're trying to work on and produce. We are working on several TV and video projects together, and because of the stop, they can't hire me to make the puppets since now they have no money because everybody has stopped production.
I'm OK if this business shuts down. I really am, as long as I have another avenue to pursue within my acting. I wrote a script already for his TV show that they want to do with me, and I would love to explore that. I thought about opening a children's theater. I mean, now's not the time to open a children's theater. But I was sitting here thinking, and there are no children's theatres in Atlanta except for the Center for Puppetry Arts, which is specially puppets. If you think about it, the Alliance has a children's program — everyone's got a children's program — but there is no strictly children's theater in Atlanta. With the amount of things that I'm capable of doing, I was like, "I could start a children's theater!" That kind of stuff is going through my head. I'm thinking of opportunities as opposed to, "Oh, my God. What am I going to do?" But that's me and who I've always been. When a rock is thrown in my path, I climb over that rock. I'm not the kind of person who goes, "Oh, crap. There's a rock in my way. I'm going to go home." …
I still see hope. I've never lost hope and I still see a million opportunities for me.
