There was a time when Lenny Schwartz began his day at 6:46 a.m. with three-quarters of a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. At 2:47 p.m. he’d consume 16 plain ziti, with no sauce or cheese. And at night, he’d eat the top off a muffin.

For a while the Cranston native made himself turkey sandwiches with low-cal bread using three slices of meat, then he cut back to two. But he began to suspect the deli workers of slicing the meat too thick, and became stressed out. No more sandwiches.

Schwartz’s eating disorder started when he was 13 and decided to drop about 30 pounds to impress a new girlfriend. The romance didn’t last, but Schwartz’s addiction to being thin did.

Life became a series of obsessive routines in an effort to trim even more pounds. Being thin gave him a sense of power, even when he was skeletal. Being able to control what he ate made him feel superior to others.

Schwartz could eat only during certain times of the day, and he kept track of the number of bites he took. One too many, and he’d have to run off the calories in a mad dash around his house.

“I didn’t feel I was a good person unless I was thin,” said Schwartz.

Schwartz kept this up into his late teens, until he was hospitalized. At the time, he weighed 97 pounds.

Now 30, Schwartz has recovered. But a dramatization of his stubborn battle with anorexia is coming to the stage this weekend, when his Scarecrow will be performed at Providence’s Bell Street Chapel.

The play, which opens tonight and runs through April 26, was written about a decade ago when Schwartz was a film and theater student at Rhode Island College. It was last produced in 2001 at the Providence campus of the University of Rhode Island.

Now, Schwartz and his Daydream Theatre Company are reviving the show and preparing for a four-day run in Manhattan next month.

Schwartz, who works in phone sales at Trinity Repertory Company and the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Smithfield, spent more than two years writing the play, in part because his Rhode Island College teacher, David Burr, had high expectations, and in part because it was such a painful subject to address.

“I had to be brutally honest,” said the 5-foot-10-inch Schwartz, who still suffers from a distorted body image and sometimes feels at 142 pounds that he’s “huge.”

In the play, Schwartz’s character, who is played by Dillon Medina, seems normal at first. But he soon begins to decline, becoming more isolated from friends and more obsessive about his eating habits. No one can get through to him, said Schwartz, no one understands what’s going on in his life.

“When the show starts out it’s a comedy,” said Schwartz, who is married and has a 24-pound cat. “It’s funny. Then you realize this guy has a problem.

“It gets to a point where he almost can’t function because his world is crashing down around him.”

Schwartz said all the characters in the play are based on people he knows, including his mother, who played a central role in his recovery. Much of the show deals with the coming together of mother and son.

Schwartz said that to get better he had to learn to let people into his life, and to allow himself to feel loved. He said he also had to decide to deal with his problems.

“You can get all the advice in the world,” said Schwartz, who now lives in Scituate. “But if you don’t make that decision to get better it won’t matter.”

Schwartz’s Daydream Theatre has been based at Bell Street Chapel, just off Broadway, for the past four years. The company puts on a couple of shows a year, most of them original plays Schwartz has written.

This fall, Schwartz will unveil his multicultural holiday play called December Rabbi, and in the spring of 2009 his show about the rise of the Internet, Wire Games, makes its debut.

But right now Schwartz, who is directing Scarecrow, has his sights set on New York. He and the cast of 11 will be in Manhattan at Nicu’s Spoon Theatre, 38 West 38th St., May 28 to 31.

The New York run, which is being co-produced by a friend from Schwartz’s Rhode Island College days, Michael Roderick, has been in the planning stages for more than a year.

Daydream, which has been making money on its productions, and Roderick are splitting the $2,000 rental fee on the theater.

With all the scurrying around writing plays, working two jobs and running a part-time theater, Schwartz, a high-energy guy, said he sleeps about four hours a night.

“But when you love what you’re doing,” he said, “it doesn’t seem like work half the time.”

Scarecrow plays Bell Street Chapel, 5 Bell St., tonight, tomorrow and Saturday at 8. Tickets are $10, $5 for students and seniors. Call (401) 290-7865.

cgray@projo.com