MIA RHODES, Special to the Denisonian—
You take your seat in the theater, but the house lights never dim, the curtain never opens, and the stage is left in black. It’s your daughter’s dance recital; it’s the Columbus symphony orchestra, it’s a cruise line show, it’s a collegiate theatrical production that never begins, robbed of dramatic emphasis.
Elizabeth Dauterman has the solution.
Dauterman, 34, a recent hire at the Eisner Center for the Performing Arts at Denison University, sits in her shared office. Her upbeat personality is not surprising, as her emails have been balanced with the perfect amount of exclamation marks and smiley faces.
The new role Elizabeth is filling, Production Coordinator Technical Assistant, comes with a long list of responsibilities and required skills – a list that Elizabeth color-coded and alphabetized, of course. Elizabeth’s title has one foot in theater production (i.e., stage management) and the other in technical theater (i.e., carpentry, lighting design, etc.). The type of candidate who would be able to fit both of these highly specialized disciplines “is a purple elephant,” Elizebeth said.
Before moving to Columbus, Ohio, Elizabeth lived in Portland,
Oregon. Her time in Portland and her experience of the city was heavily tainted by the COVID-19 pandemic that struck six months after she moved there. Unable to engage with the local social scene, she went hiking to fill her time until she was called back to her home state of Ohio to start work at Denison.
Elizabeth and her then-partner, now fiance, one dog, and a 14-year-old cat all piled into a Honda Fit and set off for Columbus, a city that Elizabeth agrees is culturally, “[a] very big difference” from Portland.
On the way, they stopped at Abraham Lincoln’s house, as no good road trip is complete without at least one historical stop. Sammy, Elizabeth’s dog, must not have been a big fan as he chose to relieve himself on Lincoln’s front stoop.
A few Mcdonald’s vanilla ice cream cones later, Elizabeth’s road trip snack of choice, they reached Indianapolis, Indiana. With just three hours to go on the trip, their car decided the load of pets and people was too much and broke down.
Luckily, after a few hours spent waiting in a Petco, Elizabeth’s parents came to the rescue. They drove up from Cincinnati with an extra car and after five days of traveling, everyone made it safely to Columbus.
“At work, Elizabeth is called to wear hard hats and headsets, cater to actors and to technical directors,” says Matthew Sing ‘23, an economics major and student employee at Eisner. Traveling 2,434 miles across the country to advance her and her fiance’s life mirrors the work Elizabeth does daily.
Elizabeth is an inspiring worker and an inspiring individual. Her resume can attest to the first of these statements, and the second can be proven by her response to the question, “what excites you about life?”
Elizabeth gently tilted her head back to carefully consider the question before saying, “Established connections with other humans.”
Her confidence in her answer grew, and she leaned forward slightly in her chair, continuing, “The joy I get coming to work every day now, six months in, is so much greater because I have friends, and I know a little about all of their lives, and I care deeply about them.” She contently concluded, “that just makes me really happy” with a smile on her face, just like the one typed at the end of her email.