 WORLD-CLASS
DESIGNER AND A
LOCAL TREASURE
Margaret Mitchell displays
her
talent
in Incarnate
Word
productions
By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF
Photography JANET ROGERS
In the costume shop of the
University of the Incarnate Word’s
theater department, Margaret
Mitchell has laid out six or seven
drawings of costume designs on a large
counter. The pictures show women clad
in lush, flowery long dresses with plunging
necklines, while the men, at least the
younger ones, appear sleek in black
leather. In one drawing, an older gentleman
looks like Henry VIII.
All this attire was actually worn by
actors in a recent production of Much
Ado About Nothing produced by Austin
Shakespeare in May. Amazingly, Mitchell,
who has been in the theatrical design
business for more than 20 years, had
never worked on this play before.
“The director told me that she wanted
a sharp difference between the men
and the women,” explains Mitchell,
pointing to the drawings. “I decided
not to go strictly Elizabethan but to
abstract the Elizabethan period into a
more modern look. That’s why the men
display a kind of biker aesthetic in black
leather, and women wear these feminine
dresses that are reminiscent of the
period but simplified.”
Mitchell went to New York to buy the
fabrics, as the selection is becoming
increasingly limited in both Austin and
San Antonio. With fewer people sewing
nowadays, fabric stores have been closing,
she notes. Inspired by the colors and
textures of her purchases, she started
drawing on the plane ride back.
Costumes are, of course, only one
aspect of a stage production, but they
are a more essential part than most theatergoers
realize. On the obvious level,
they define the time and place in which
the action is set, but even more importantly,
they contribute to the actors’
interpretation of their roles. It is up to the
costumer to teach the performers, especially
student actors, how to inhabit their
stage clothes with ease and how to
adopt the proper body language that
goes with the clothes.
“It’s like alchemy,” says Mitchell. “Not
only do you decide what actors will wear,
but then there is the process of transformation
during the fittings. You become
part teacher, part psychologist, part salesman. With students, I have to teach
them what to do with a train, for
instance, or how to handle a hat, how to
walk down the stairs. Professional actors
come prepared, but they have their own
demands. Every leading lady — and leading
man — makes friends with the costume
designer.”
In mid-July, Mitchell’s attention was
already turning to the UIW season, which
will feature two plays this fall, the funny
and poignant Real Women Have Curves
by Josefina Lopez and the perennially
beloved A Christmas Carol. While the
costumes for the latter already exist,
Mitchell had to start from scratch on Real
Women, a play about a group of
Mexican-American seamstresses working
in a Los Angeles dress factory in the early
1980s. Period costumes may be more
glamorous, but contemporary or nearcontemporary
ones often present more
of a challenge.
 “It can be deceptively hard. I would
rather do a period show,” Mitchell
emphasizes. “With recent times, like the ‘80s, people often have different perceptions
of what is accurate for that time
and setting. Because of that, my choices
have to be very specific. I do have to do
research. Since the style here will be realism,
I have to find out what women who
worked in those sweatshops looked like.
Period design is more fun; it allows for
more imagination. I can live in my head
in a particular historical period for a
while.” She is especially fond of the late
18th century and the Elizabethan era.
A theater professor at UIW for the last
18 years, Mitchell has designed both sets
and costumes — and occasionally directed — more than 120 productions at the
school as well as for venues in Austin,
Dallas, Fort Worth and in Wellington,
New Zealand. Her designs have been
shown twice at the McNay Art Museum,
first in an exhibit focusing on Broadway
musicals and later in Shakespeare’s
Haunted Stage in 2007. The latter featured
10 Mitchell drawings plus two
actual costumes.
For her local work, she has received
multiple Globe Awards from the Alamo
Theater Arts Council (ATAC).
When I interviewed her last, some
10 years ago, Mitchell spoke of her
desire to spread her wings internationally,
and in the interim she has done so,
to a certain degree. Among other
things, her designs were included three
times in the United States National
Exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial,
an international theatrical design competition-cum-conference where countries
compete against one another.
At 43, she has a long career still ahead
of her, yet Mitchell is already garnering
some major accolades. On Oct. 5, she
will become the 18th recipient of the
Jasmina Wellinghoff Award for Special
Contribution to the Theater, to be presented
at the annual Globe Awards Show
and Gala at the Charline McCombs
Empire Theatre. (Yes, the award bears the
name of this columnist, who was the
founder and first president of the Globes’
sponsoring organization.)*
“It’s a big honor to be recognized by
my colleagues in the community. But I
was also a little surprised because sometimes
I feel like people don’t know me
because I am not in the thick of San
Antonio theater,” says the designer,
referring to the fact that she has not
worked with other companies in town.
But director and ATAC board member
Diane Malone sees it a bit differently:
“Margaret is always willing to help other
theaters if they need to borrow costumes
or with advice or just to talk about costuming.
All the nun costumes we used
for Nunsense (at the former Church
Theater) came from UIW. And she’s such
an artist, a world-class designer who is
right here; a true local treasure.”
So will the honoree design a special
outfit for herself for the occasion?
Yes, she probably will, says Mitchell.
 A DIFFERENT
PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE
Normally, she seldom bothers with
her own clothes. Her work “uniform”
consists of simple black garments in
order not to interfere with the color
palette of the show. Outside of work, she
likes her clothes to be “fast and comfortable.
I have little desire to make my own
clothes,” she explains. “It’s like, if you
work in the ice cream store, you really
don’t want to eat ice cream. And even if
I designed something for myself, I would
have a dressmaker make it. The only
thing I sew these days is my son’s
Halloween costume.”
Lucky kid! Divorced from her first husband,
Mitchell has been a single mom for
the last two years, but that may soon
change. She is currently in a serious relationship
with another man whose name
she prefers to keep private for the time
being. When she speaks about her 6-
year-old son, Zachary, however, there is
no reticence. Then her manner gets so
animated that it’s clear he has brought
new joy into her life. Because he was
adopted from Child Protective Services as
a toddler, Mitchell has also become
somewhat of a crusader for local adoptions
through CPS. “He is fantastic,” says
the enthusiastic mom. ‘Several friends
followed suit and adopted from CPS,
too, because of Zachary. Why go to
China or Romania, or pay thousands of
dollars to private agencies when many
perfectly healthy kids need loving homes
right here?” What’s more, she says, it
costs nothing, and these children are
promised a free college education paid
by the state.
A native San Antonian who grew up
in Fort Worth, young Margaret was
about 14 the first time she realized that
doing stage scenery and costumes was
actually someone’s job. She promptly
set out to figure how to go about it.
When time came for college, Mitchell
enrolled in theater arts at Texas
Wesleyan College, only to be told that
there were no scholarships available for
scenic design students. Thus, she
became an acting major who “designed
on the side.” Later on, however, she
also earned an M.F.A. in costume design
and technology from UT Austin.
In her current position as one of four
full-time faculty in UIW’s theater department,
she teaches four different courses to
52 drama majors in addition to working on
shows. Her students are her greatest contribution
to the community, she notes.
Mitchell’s career might have developed
differently had she not followed the advice
of nationally known designer John
Conklin, who reviewed her portfolio while
she was still in graduate school. At the
time, the novice designer was considering
heading to New York to find work as a
design assistant on Broadway. “He told
me, ‘Don’t do it. If you start on that path,
you’ll never stop assisting because the
money is good,’” she recalls. “’If you want
to become an artist in your own right, start
in a smaller venue and build up from
there.’ That’s the best advice I ever got.”
About 10 years ago, professor Mitchell
was also instrumental in establishing an
ongoing artistic exchange of faculty and
students between UIW and the National
Drama School of New Zealand, called Toi
Whakaari O Aotearoa in the Maori language.
The New Zealanders have visited
San Antonio to teach and co-stage various
productions, and she has traveled several
times to their country to do the same. As if
all of that, plus her summer jobs, weren’t
enough, the designer has been working
on a major history of design book with collaborators
Oscar Brockett from UT Austin
and Linda Hardberger, the former curator
of the Tobin Collection of Theater Arts at
the McNay.
“Robert Tobin wanted this book to be
written,” explains Mitchell, “and the
Tobin Foundation is paying for the work.
Part of his amazing collection is featured
in the book. For us, it has been a huge,
10-year undertaking. Oscar is handling
the history part, while I am writing the
technical part. Linda is preparing separate
sidebars describing the public’s attitude
toward theater through history.”
Fortunately, the book is almost finished.
Since becoming a mother, Mitchell
has stopped doing scenery and has tried
to cut down on other engagements to
focus more on her son and some nontheater related goals, such as returning
to her love of painting and learning to
play the piano.
“Having a child gives you a different
perspective on life. It used to be all about
work and career; now it’s no longer all
about that,” she says. “I want to spend
time with Zachary. And I have a lot of soccer
and basketball games in my future!”
*This columnist is no longer involved
with ATAC and has in no way participated
in the selection of the award recipient.
For more information about the 18th
Globe Awards Show and Gala, go to www.atac-sa.org.
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