By Sarah McMillin, Assistant Living & Arts Editor
Hanging in her office are some of Elizabeth Ennis’ favorite costume renderings from the past few shows that she has worked as the costume designer.
As the artist of costumes at Susquehanna, Ennis has designed four shows for the theatre department and is currently working on her fifth, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” adapted by Liz Lochhead, which opens at Susquehanna University on Nov.14.
Ennis also does professional freelance design in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. She was recently nominated for a Barrymore award for her costume design of Theatre Horizon’s “The Color Purple.” The show won “Outstanding Overall Production of a Musical” at the event.
Ennis is originally from Connecticut. Ennis grew up attending performances at the University of Connecticut, which is where she believes her love of theatre emerged.
Ennis was involved in any production she could be throughout her childhood and in high school. She earned her bachelor of arts in musical theatre performance from American University in 2010. However, during her last year of undergraduate studies, she realized that as much as she loved performing, it was not quite what she wanted to do.
“I struggled for a while trying to figure out what to do with my life,” she said, “And then by chance [I] designed a show that was being directed by one of my fellow students and found that I really loved it.”
The show was “Bluebeard,” and was put on by students of a student theatre organization at American University.
Ennis said, “It was insane and hard and mind numbing and I got to the end of it and was just like ‘when can I do that again.’”
Ennis believes that it is her background knowledge in acting that led her to costume design. For her, it is the design element of a production that is the most “connected to character.”
“It pulls together a bunch of my different interests: my interest in fashion, in fashion history, interest in visual art, in drawing and painting and also my experience as an actor,” she said.
After obtaining her bachelor’s, Ennis worked as a freelance costume designer, stitcher and dresser in the Washington D.C. area. She spent this time building her portfolio and learning about costume design and figuring out if was truly what she wanted to do.
Ennis then began her studies at Temple University, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts in costume design in 2018. She designed five mainstage shows there. She began teaching at Susquehanna the following fall.
Most academic and collegiate theatre programs, require a professional degree. This led Ennis to choose Temple because of its opportunities to teach classes while enrolled in the graduate program. Ennis taught both costume design and introduction to design over the course of her studies at Temple.
She described her first time walking into a classroom as the teacher as terrifying. Her students were just years younger than her.
At Susquehanna, not only does Ennis design costumes for the university’s mainstage theatre productions, she also oversees the construction of the garments in the costume shop.
Ennis teaches classes in both costume technology and design, as well as stage makeup, production labs and independent studies.
In the costume shop at Susquehanna, Ennis oversees nine student workers who build the costumes for the department’s mainstage shows.
Junior Naomi Cohen did not take costume tech and started working in the costume shop in the fall of 2017. That year she learned as she went, but was never formally taught.
That changed when Ennis took the position of artist of costumes. Cohen then felt like she was able to learn.
“Not only is she an amazing artist and phenomenal person, she is wholly herself and nobody else. She’s a really good teacher too,” Cohen said.
Junior shop worker Hannah Carlson agreed with this sentiment, stating: “I think it’s really difficult to find a teacher that can make a teachable moment out of a mistake, but Liz can do that.”
While Ennis has worked on many shows over her career, she has a certain affinity for Susquehanna’s production of “She Stoops to Conquer” that opened last semester.
“I love fashion history and that was a chance to just dig into the fashion history of it,” she said, “I both love how the renderings came out and I think the show itself turned out beautifully.”
As for the future, Ennis is excited to teach costume design in the spring of 2020, as it is the first time the class is being offered since she has been at Susquehanna.
“I can’t wait to take some of the new things I’ve learned even since [Temple] and apply them,” Ennis said.
Ennis shared how designing over 30 shows in her career and teaching at Temple and Susquehanna has shaped her future: “[I] discovered that I love teaching as much as I love costume design. This is what I want to do with my life, and here I am.”
