Vanessa Leuck 2003 MFA in Costume Design
“My dream since I was a child was to work for Disney,” Vanessa muses. Years later, she assisted on two Disney on Ice shows before becoming lead designer with a $1 million budget for the 2009 Disney on Ice production of Let’s Celebrate, which is still touring.
Growing up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Vanessa considered theatre as “a fun thing you did in the summer.” It wasn’t until she was in undergrad SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) that she realized that “costume design was a profession.”
When she came to VCU to interview with Liz Hopper (former Head of Costume Design), Vanessa recalls, “She was able to look at my portfolio and saw that even though I didn’t have a lot of costume design specific training, I had all of the tools that I needed.”
As many graduating MFA’s did, Vanessa went to SETC to look for a summer job. Fatefully, she sat next to the recruiter for Disney Internships on the plane, who was also headed to SETC. That connection landed her a 6-month internship in Orlando working in the creative offices at Disney. She got to design the costumes for the EPCOT Spain Pavilion, which was never built.
If the culture shock of moving from Wisconsin to Georgia wasn’t enough, her next big move took Vanessa from sunny Florida to New York City in the middle of winter! Her first job was for Tricorne, hand-sewing beads for the Bollywood musical Bombay Dreams. Her cousin got Vanessa her first design job for an off-off show called Idiot’s Delight. “I got $150 plus $100 stipend and a $200 budget for a ’20s period play.” Even so, it was for Vital Theatre Company, which had a good reputation and let other people see her work.
Vanessa eventually became a costume assistant for Dawna Oak, “She had just gotten the design job for Feld Entertainment.” Vanessa went along with her, where she became the shoe assistant for Ringling Bros Circus. She ended up working for five companies of the circus and got introduced to Disney on Ice.
Vanessa met her husband, Ethan Popp on a show where he was Music Director. They married in 2009. ”When I found out I was pregnant, I started looking for teaching jobs. One year we were both traveling so much, we only saw each other for five months, so my focus shifted to doing work in NYC.”
This evolved to her current position as Assistant Professor of Costume Design at Marymount Manhattan College. Vanessa still designs professionally (eight shows already this year) and had her first Broadway show, True Crime Obsessed Broadway.
Header image (clockwise from left): Vanessa and Aldrin in Times Square 2022; family trip to Disney in 2021; Vanessa behind the scenes of Emojiland; a rendering for the Little Mermaid in Disenchanted.
Compiled by Liz Hopper (professor emeritus) and Jerry Williams (BFA ’71) for the July 2022 Theatre Alumni newsletter