Old theater costumes get new life for Halloween at Mundelein sale

Theater costumes that hadn't seen the spotlight in years were given an opportunity to retire gracefully to a new life of Halloween parties and trick-or-treating at the Kirk Players' costume sale Saturday outside St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Mundelein.

A buddy's annual haunted house and costume party brought Mundelein High School special education teacher Steve Rossini out to look for some possibilities for himself and his wife, maybe for a couple years to come.

For only $12, he left with a couple of Playing Card costumes from "Alice in Wonderland," a pair of orange state penitentiary inmate uniforms and a more elaborate spider costume from "Charlotte's Web."

The Mellen family of Mundelein just happened to be driving along Lake Street when they spotted the colorful racks of clothing standing in the parking lot and pulled in.

Though 11-year-old Brooke first tried on a turtle costume and 9-year-old Vance Jr. sampled a detailed fish costume donated by the Marriott-Lincolnshire theater, they ended up assembling cat and "nerd werewolf" costumes, respectively.

Their mother, Kimberly, said Halloween is a big social occasion in the community, with a number of parties scheduled in addition to trick-or-treating.

"The thing about Halloween now is there's an opportunity for about three or four costumes," she said.

Kirk Players is in its 50th year of providing theatrical productions and summer workshops for residents of central Lake County. There haven't been many opportunities during that half century to whittle down the costume stock.

Fred Vipond, who's in charge of the company's costumes, said the storage space had recently reached capacity. He tried to pick out about a third of the costumes to sell Saturday to free up some room.

"It was hard to give up some costumes I made myself," Vipond admitted. "But I looked at how long the costume had been in storage unused."

Brenda Sparks, who designs many of the sets for Kirk Players, said the costumes were priced at $3 or $4 each. The point was for them to go, and any revenue made was just gravy, she said.

While only about half the costumes on display were sold - raising a modest $155 - the rest will be offered to charity, Kirk Players Vice President Jon Matousek said. What's still not wanted after that will be junked.