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(This article was originally published in the AJC on 3/28/2003.)

JOHNNY CRAWFORD/Staff (ENLARGE)
In a delicate balance, Atlanta actress Carol Mitchell-Leon juggles performing, directing and teaching.
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Well, here we are in a sunny side room of the Midtown restaurant Blue Trout, waiting for one of Atlanta's best and busiest leading ladies. Famous for her privacy and modesty, difficult to reach by phone, Carol Mitchell-Leon arrives just a few minutes late — looking almost terrified at the thought of having lunch with a journalist.

Let's see.

A little wine? No, thanks.

A nice meal? "Probably not a very big one, " says Mitchell-Leon, who's requested a late lunch because she's been fasting in the mornings for Lent.

But like Amanda Wingfield, the character she plays in a revival of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" at Theatrical Outfit this week, the "40-ish" Mitchell-Leon soon brightens at the attention of a gentleman. A compliment on her scarf and red-hennaed ponytail prompts a smile.

A comment on the handbag — a little straw number embellished with a cafe-society scene — gets a giggle. Pointing to a female figure on the purse, Mitchell-Leon — who often seems to flutter between the dignified and the girlish — says, "I like her because she's drinking."

It's a tiny stab at humor, but it's something.

Spending a couple of hours in the company of this gifted actress and Clark Atlanta University educator can be an object lesson in the virtues of quietude and humility. Shy to a fault, Mitchell-Leon seems to have trouble grasping how anyone would care about the details of her life. A woman who is unafraid to show the rawest corners of her soul to a room full of strangers, she admits that it's easier to slip into the skin of a character than to tell her own story. Her friends say it's an honest, heartfelt response to a habit of being that is selfless, work-centered and deeply spiritual.

Indeed, between the acting, directing and teaching at Clark (where she is interim chair of the department of speech communication and theater arts), it seems that she has time for little else. She commutes daily from her home in Fayetteville, relishes the early mornings with her dog, Buddy (a "mutt" she adopted from the pound), and enjoys a good breakfast and a cup of coffee with Equal. From 1987 to 1998, she was married to high-profile Atlanta theater artist Kenny Leon. Though their friends say the split was difficult for her, she has since poured herself into her work with a vengeance.

Last season, Mitchell-Leon appeared in several significant Atlanta productions, including Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" at 7 Stages and "The Doll Plays" at Actor's Express. More recently, she directed "Do Lord Remember Me" at New Jomandi and starred in Alice Childress' "Trouble in Mind" at Actor's Express. The day after "Trouble in Mind" closed, she drove to the Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Roswell to catch the performance of a student she coaches, then to the Alliance Theatre for the second act of the final performance of "Saint Lucy's Eyes." The next day, she appeared in "The Lysistrata Project" at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival.

The Mitchell-Leon directing resume is growing, too. In May, she'll stage "Mahalia" — a musical biography of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, starring Atlantan Bernardine Mitchell (no relation) — at Marietta's Theatre in the Square. "Can you see my heart? It's jumping right now talking about it," Mitchell-Leon says of "Mahalia." "I'm overcome. It's the perfect show for Bernardine."

This week, Mitchell-Leon stars in the Theatrical Outfit's revival of PushPush Theater's luminous 2001 production of "The Glass Menagerie," directed by Tim Habeger and featuring an African-American cast.

"It's not what you normally get offered or you get even a chance to do," she says, calling the production a tribute to the genius and universality of Williams. Only a few words have been excised to fit the context.

In the Williams classic, Wingfield rails at her children for not having jobs and marriage prospects. "I often wonder after the show, driving home, what she is really like when she goes in her bedroom," Mitchell-Leon says. "What must the sound of the house be like when she shuts up? It must be blessed assurance, you know?"

In a city that has a preponderance of strong, ensemble-driven theater, Mitchell-Leon's turn as Amanda Wingfield two years ago was the kind of rare, personality-driven performance that viewers are still clucking about.

"Carol took acting in Atlanta to another level," says Atlanta actor Michael Anthony Tatmon ("Hush: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins"). "It was one of the most riveting performances I have seen anywhere, and she changed my perception of an American classic. She's a virtuoso."

Mitchell-Leon's colleagues describe her humility as a rare and precious thing in the theater world. This is a woman who can't name a single role she'd like to play. "I think if I'm fearful of anything, it's expecting too much," she says.

After arriving in Atlanta in the mid-1970s to study at Clark, Mitchell-Leon worked with Frank Wittow's Academy Theatre for 10 years and has been a Jomandi regular since that theater was founded in 1978. Then came the Actor's Express era with recently departed Artistic Director Wier Harman.

Harman, who first cast Mitchell-Leon in the experimental Suzan-Lori Parks drama "The America Play" in 2001, says, "Carol has an incredible natural authority onstage and an incredible elasticity as a performer. She's one of those actresses who can play across ages and emotions. She's impossible to pigeonhole, and as an audience member, you can never predict what she'll do."

Rosemary Newcott remembers directing Mitchell-Leon in an Academy children's theater production of "Alice in Wonderland." Mitchell-Leon played the white rabbit. Newcott, who now runs the Alliance's youth theater, says her colleague is impossible to typecast. "She was great in 'Member of the Wedding' [in 1983 at the Academy]. She was great in that Dario Fo piece at Horizon ['We Won't Pay,' 1986]. She's just a chameleon."

And, says Newcott of her occasional dinner companion, "She's the best person to be in the dressing room with — the best. She's just the most fun. She's hysterically funny. She's generous. She's a good roommate. ... I've never met a student who hasn't loved her."

Alliance Artistic Director Susan V. Booth, who recently cast Mitchell-Leon in a new, ensemble-driven work that explores the topic of faith, recalls a recent long lunch with the actress. "At one point, I said, 'Tell me what faith means to you.' And she said, 'It's what lets me fall asleep every night knowing I will wake up the next morning, and it's what makes me believe the bus will come.' ... There is something [in Mitchell-Leon] that's lit from inside, whether she's onstage or in conversation, that's just glorious."

Growing up in Philadelphia, Mitchell-Leon attended Quaker, Catholic and Episcopal schools and United Methodist and Unitarian churches. "I've sort of come to the conclusion that I believe in everything pretty much, because they all have points," she says. "But it's OK if I don't ever become a member of one sect."

She says the essence of her faith is about "being useful" and avoiding negativity, "which I think is the thing that probably causes more trouble in the world than anything. But if you are trying to be useful, that puts a lot of that stuff out of your head."