Charlotte acting community honors a friend’s memory when mourners can’t come together
The idea about how to honor her friend came to Mitzi Corrigan during a sleepless night recently.
The long-time Charlotte casting director was worried about the new coronavirus and also about one of her closest friends, Paige Johnston Thomas, who was in the final stages of cancer. Thomas, an actor, director and former casting director partner of Corrigan’s, died on April 27 at age 51.
“Leaving us during a time of isolation was so unfair to her,” Corrigan said. “I wanted her to know how loved she was. And I wanted her many friends to have a vehicle for their grief.
“We’ve all felt so helpless” during the novel coronavirus pandemic, where stay-at-home orders have curbed people’s ability to come together and mourn.
Corrigan’s idea, the one that came to her during that restless night, was to start a scholarship fund in Thomas’ memory that would assist children who want to pursue a theater education. It would begin as a GoFundMe campaign, with a goal of creating a nonprofit foundation to administer the fund.
“Paige would come see my girls in a play if they were on stage for five seconds,” Corrigan said. Eventually, Corrigan’s daughter, Abby, got more stage time. She’s gone on to star in Hulu’s “Castle Rock “and starred in the Broadway touring company of “Fun Home.”
If you’ve been to a local theater production in the past 24 years, you’ve probably seen Thomas or felt her influence.
She was an actress, director, patron and one-time board member at both Theatre Charlotte and Carolina Actors Studio Theatre, which closed in 2014.
After earning a Master of Fine Arts, she moved to New York. But Thomas didn’t like the cold or the cattle-call auditions, Corrigan said, and came home to Charlotte to form Corrigan & Johnston Casting, a partnership that endured for 20 years.
Exceeding goals
In the weeks before Thomas’s death, Corrigan discussed the foundation with Thomas and her husband, Jay, a film/TV editor, and her mom, Laurie Johnston.
“Paige asked some questions,” Corrigan said, “and ultimately gave us her blessing.” Existing nonprofits are finding fundraising hard now.
Starting one in the middle of a recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may seem especially foolhardy. But Corrigan was undeterred. “I had a feeling this would hit people in a profound way.” “
The foundation will provide grants to kids and teens to attend arts training, said Donna Scott, a friend and colleague of Thomas’, as well as a fixture on the Charlotte theater scene.
The initial goal for the Paige Johnston Thomas Giving Tree was $20,000. A GoFundMe campaign surpassed that in a day and a half. Corrigan increased the goal to $50,000.
To date, she’s raised $38,000, and Corrigan is in the process of starting a nonprofit to ultimately administer the funds.
Beth Pesakoff, an actor, occasional co-star and Thomas’ best friend since their days at Myers Park High, will serve on its board.
“Paige was an upperclassman who’d transferred from (Charlotte) Latin. I was new to theater. She’d been acting for a while. She was big time. She took me under her wing – as she did everyone.
“Paige loved life above everything,” Pesakoff said. “It seems like something told her to live every day to its fullest. She brought humor to everything. She was even cracking us up on her deathbed.”
Find the light
The formidable, dialogue-heavy, Tony Award-winning “Oslo,” which Thomas directed for Three Bone Theatre last May, turned out to be her last project.
It was a big undertaking – there were 15 actors, sometimes on stage all at once – and Thomas directed it shortly after finishing treatment for bile duct cancer.
Her oncologist was in the audience on opening night, Pesakoff said. (Thomas was cancer-free for nearly a year before the recurrence.)
The play details the secret, back-channel negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization Even with such a serious project, Thomas told actors not to give in to the heaviness of the material.
Thomas always approached dramas from that perspective, Pesakoff said.
“She found the humor in the script, as she did in... life. She’d tell the cast, ‘If we depress the heck out of the audience, they may never come back to the theater. We have to find some humor in the desperation. We have to find the light.’ ”
That’s what her friends are trying to do now.
Corrigan and Thomas were in a book club that included several local theater people.
“It’s the kind where maybe 5% of us read the book,” Corrigan said. (Thomas was likely to have been in that 5%.) “It’s really more about getting together for wine.”
The group has been meeting weekly via Zoom since the coronavirus quarantine began, and Thomas joined them in the early weeks of the shutdown when she had the energy to be part of it.
“Jay surprised us on our last call by joining,” Corrigan said of the April 29 virtual meeting. “We were so excited. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven. Jay told us that Paige’s last moments had been peaceful.
“Once this shutdown has been lifted, we may all go to someone’s farm or to the mountains,” Corrigan said of a future, intimate gathering of friends to celebrate Thomas’ life. “We’ll light candles and howl at the moon.”
But until that time, and then long after, friends have created a way they and the whole community can honor Thomas – a woman who looked for the light in the darkest times.
To learn more
The goal is to eventually turn the GoFundMe campaign into a nonprofit foundation. To learn more or make a donation at gofundme.com/f/the-paige-johnston-thomas-giving-tree.
This story is part of an Observer underwriting project with the Thrive Campaign for the Arts, supporting arts journalism in Charlotte.
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