This season, the Tony-winning artisan is working on “School Girls,” “The Imaginary Invalid” and “Warriors” — and that’s just on Broadway.
Nikiya Mathis’ calendar is packed. The designer begins this Broadway season with the hairstyles, wigs and makeup of “School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play,” opening Sept. 28 at the Samuel J Friedman Theatre. Mathis then finalizes the hair and wig designs of the Broadway revival of “The Imaginary Invalid,” opening Oct. 22 at the Todd Haimes Theatre.
Then it’s the Off-Broadway staging of “Seven Guitars” at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater and the Los Angeles premiere of “Purpose” at the Geffen Playhouse. All the while, Mathis is working on the multi-city regional tour of 2026 Tony-winning Best Play “Liberation,” preparing for the Broadway debut of Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Warriors” in the spring and teaching master classes to acting and design students at top universities. And don’t forget the wig designs for the upcoming Apple TV+ release “Matchbox: The Movie” and the Netflix movie “Here Comes the Flood.”
When Mathis spoke to Broadway News, she was in the middle of a workshop of Lachrisa Grandberry’s superstition-centric play “Black-Eyed Peas & Collard Greens” at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. “My design life is helpful for me as an actor, and my acting life is helpful for me as a designer,” said Mathis, also a classically-trained actor previously seen onscreen in FX’s “Snowfall” and Starz’s “Power Book III: Raising Kanan.” “It’s a balancing act, but I absolutely need both in my life.”
Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy “School Girls,” about a group of teens at a Ghanaian boarding school vying to compete in a pageant, is adorned with commentary about Euro-centric beauty standards and natural hair texture. Mathis — who received a Special Tony Award for her work on Bioh’s play “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” — tells Broadway News about designing character-specific styles for the ’80s-set play, juggling commitments across stage and screen, and continuing to advocate for more equitable hair practices on Broadway and beyond.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Broadway News: What’s your usual timeline for designing a show’s hair and wigs?
Nikiya Mathis: It depends. We usually start production meetings two months out from rehearsal. I start to think about the design, I talk to the costume designer and director about what they’re thinking, and I have consultations with the actors. Sometimes I’m using a wig in my stock, and I have to put in a new front that mimics the actor’s hairline. Or I might have something that fits automatically. Otherwise, we have to build it from scratch. I also try to do wig wraps — a mold of the actor’s head, so I can build the wig — before the first rehearsal, which gives me enough time to order hair and get the wig built.
Ruthie Fierberg
I’m usually doing fittings in the week before tech. I try to do that early because, on the first day of tech, they give us maybe an hour for everybody to get into costumes and wigs, and that’s never enough time. That’s when I’m doing a general styling to check not only the fit but also the silhouette: Is it making your face rounder? Do we want [the silhouette] to be narrower or wider? Yes, the wig looked good on the wig block, but I also want it to look as good on your face. During previews, we’re making minor tweaks and talking about maintenance — we curled this one wig on Tuesday, does it need to be recurled by Thursday? I’m pretty much done by a week out from opening, unless it’s a really short preview period, because then I’m working up until the last minute.
