A Life in the Limelight
Actor Ed Pilkington helped shape theatre in the High Country

By Jeff Eason

Audiences enjoyed every minute of the world premiere of Jan Karon’s Journey to Mitford, a Blowing Rock Stage Company production presented this past month at the Hayes Performing Arts Center. The show had heart, drama and a lot of laughs.

Actor Ed Pilkington recently finished a successful stint as Uncle Billy in the world premiere of Jan Karon’s Journey to Mitford. Photo by Jeff Eason

The lion’s share of those laughs came courtesy of local actor Ed Pilkington who played Uncle Billy in the sprawling Mitford saga. With perfect comic timing and a handful of corny-yet-side-splitting jokes, Pilkington quickly became an audience favorite with his portrayal of the most humorous and hopeful of the Mitford residents.

Uncle Billy is just the latest role for Pilkington, a Boone resident who has performed on stages from New York City to Vancouver and even played a role in the outdoor drama The Lost Colony in Manteo, North Carolina when he was a young actor out of Ithaca College. It was while performing at the outdoor drama that he met the love of his life.

“I played Father Martin in The Lost Colony and Pat played Joyce Archer,” said Pilkington. “She was quite the musician and even had her own folk album.”

Pilkington claims he knew that he wanted to be an actor from the time he first set foot on a high school stage in his hometown of Goldsboro. After he graduated from Ithaca College, he got his first big break when he was accepted for enrolment in the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, a rarity for a Yank like young Ed. Right before he was to leave for England, however, Uncle Sam stepped in and stopped him.

“My college deferment was up at Ithaca and it hadn’t yet started at the Royal Academy,” said Pilkington. “I was drafted into the Army on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

After Ed’s stint in the Army, he and his young bride Pat moved to New York City—the center of the live theatre universe. Pat worked as a secretary in the Empire State Building while Ed pursued his acting career.

“It didn’t take very long, I was fortunate,” said Pilkington. “I had a roommate who knew a fellow named Ken Costigan. He was the director of the 8th Avenue Theatre. They were doing (Christopher) Marlowe’s Edward II and lo and behold he cast me within a week of my being there. That show was a success and people apparently enjoyed my work.”

Costigan also noticed Ed and subsequently cast him in a pivotal role in his next Off-Broadway show. The play was called Light Up the Sky and featured actors such as Vincent Gardenia, Jeffrey Lynn and Sylvia Sidney. Pilkington’s role, a cameo, was small but important in the context of the play.

“So we opened that show and the headline in the newspaper the next day was ‘Young Star Discovered,’” said Pilkington. “I was terrified because of Sylvia Sidney. There was already a guy in our show that she didn’t like because he had tried to steal a scene from her the summer before. And she just really hated him. I was afraid to go in the theatre that night. I walked by her dressing room and she just called my name. I walked in there and she said, ‘Congratulations.’ Everybody was so encouraging.”

That night Costigan threw a big opening night party for the cast and crew at one of New York’s finer restaurants. Ed and Pat got there a little bit late and when they entered the whole party burst into applause.

Robert Ludlum, the author of dozens of thriller novels including the original Bourne Identity series, was the producer at the Playhouse on the Mall where Light Up the Sky was being staged. Ludlum arranged for his agent to give the Pilkingtons some furniture for their new apartment and asked Ed to join his talent agency.

“My career was off to a big start,” said Pilkington. “I did a show with James Whitmore called A Case of Libel in the same theater. It was a major role. I played a young law student that was key to the story.”

The play examined the witch-hunt for communists in the 1930s and was fairly controversial when it was staged in the 1960s.

Things were moving fast for the Pilkingtons on a number of levels and soon Pat was pregnant with their first child, a girl they would name Jennifer.

“I was thinking about trying to find something that would bring in steadier money,” said Pilkington. “I got a phone call from Sandy Moffitt who was at Elon College. He had been the stage manager when I was at The Lost Colony.”

Moffitt was leaving his teaching position to pursue his PhD at Florida State and needed a replacement. He asked Ed to take his place for two years at Elon, located outside Greensboro. The Pilkingtons moved back to North Carolina and Ed eventually stayed at Elon for four years, running the theatre department and forming a successful repertory company.

“Then all of a sudden the money crunch came for small colleges in this country,” said Pilkington. “Some of them went under, especially the church-related schools. Elon was struggling so they did away with theater, part of the foreign language department and some of the music department. It was a drastic cut.”

It was 1969 and Pilkington was once again looking for a job. He had already applied for a job in the theater program at Fordham University in New York when Elon’s president referred him to the head of Appalachian State University. He wanted the Fordham job and looked forward to moving back to Manhattan but didn’t hear back from Bob Young, the head of the theater department there. After an interview at Appalachian State, Pilkington agreed to come to Boone and become head of the theater department.

“This was when we first became a regional university in 1970,” said Pilkington. “I was excited and thought this was an opportunity and there seemed a lot of ways that I could be used up here.”

It was only after he accepted the ASU job that Pilkington discovered that he had also been given the job at Fordham. His contract for that college, however, was held up in the New York postal workers strike.

“That’s how I wound up here instead of being in Manhattan,” said Pilkington.

After settling into a new job and a new town, Pilkington began discovering other opportunities for bringing the arts to the High Country. He founded a new organization called the Blue Ridge Creative Arts Council.

“I brought Mary, a gal in charge of the arts council in Raleigh, up here,” said Pilkington. “We met with about 35 people in Boone. I have so many wonderful memories of people like James Marsh and Alfred Adams who supported everything that we did. They got behind the idea of a three-county arts council. The goal was within two or three years each county would establish its own arts council.”

The Blue Ridge Creative Arts Council eventually split into the arts councils for Ashe, Avery and Watauga counties. It also spawned the Blue Ridge Community Theatre.

“The theatre company was the driving component of our arts council for years,” said Pilkington. “Janet Spear was teaching at Lees-McRae (College) and became instrumental at the Blue Ridge Community Theatre.”

It was about this time that Pilkington became director of the outdoor drama Horn in the West, a position that he held for two decades.

“Jim Jackson was the president of the Kiwanis here and I was a member,” said Pilkington. “The Kiwanis Club in this county kept Horn in the West afloat for many years. The whole club would come out and paint and rake leaves.”

Pilkington was then director of cultural programs for Appalachian State. He and Jackson began thinking of ways to utilize the university’s resources during the summer months.

“We had a dream. We had an idea that maybe this town should become a center of the arts. A place where people could come and really enjoy themselves in the summer.”

After meeting with ASU’s chancellor, Jackson and Pilkington arranged for the chamber orchestra of the North Carolina Symphony to perform in the High Country. In addition to performing on campus, the orchestra broke down into smaller brass and string quartets and played at Hound Ears, Linville Ridge and the Blowing Rock Country Club, among other venues.

“That was the start of the Appalachian Summer Festival,” said Pilkington. “Then the Rosens and other wonderful people came in and built it into what it is today.”

Around 1990, one of Pilkington’s former ASU students, Marc Wilson, returned to the area and started a summer theatre company in Blowing Rock.

“He called me and said, ‘Would you like to be in a show?’ I had given up my Equity (actors’ union) card when I returned to teaching. So I came back to professional acting and worked with some great people there.”

His return to acting proved to be turning point in his life. Eventually Pilkington decided to give up teaching and return to professional theatre.

“I needed to stretch out and go back to what I was really in love with as a young boy,” said Pilkington. “By this time I had become a Christian and felt that maybe God would be leading me in another direction in my life.”

Through a stint as president of the North Caroling Theatre Conference in the mid-1970s, Pilkington had plenty of connections in the state when it came time for auditioning for roles. He acted at the Temple Theatre in Sanford, Charlotte Repertory, the Flat Rock Playhouse and with the newly founded Blowing Rock Stage Company.

One of his biggest roles came when he played the lead in a play called God’s Man in Texas for a professional theater in Vancouver, British Columbia. The show was based on the true-life story of W.A. Criswell, the founder of one of the first mega-churches in the United States. When he was urged to retire by the church board, he instead set up a replacement and continued to run the church from behind the scenes.

“His replacement stood up on a Wednesday prayer meeting and read a letter of resignation blaming Criswell for lying to him,” said Pilkington. “It caused a furor in the Southern Baptist world. It was an amazing experience to go to Canada and play a Southern Baptist who really did all this for the right reasons. But after a while it got to be his possession, the thing he had to own. He wouldn’t let God run it and it destroyed him.”

Pilkington has let Criswell’s downfall serve as a lesson to him to trust in God’s will. About a decade ago his family endured two devastating events. First Pat was diagnosed with secondary melanoma, a particularly virulent form of cancer. Then both of her parents were senselessly murdered by a man in Goldsboro.

“We went through an incredible experience with God carrying us and allowing us to love each other,” said Pilkington. “Then she finds out she has ovarian cancer and I say to her, half joking, ‘What would you like to do while you’re taking chemo?’ And she said, ‘I think I’d like to learn to paint.’”

After determining that Pat was not kidding, Ed bought her an easel, some canvases and a set of oil paints. She began to paint and quickly discovered that she had a natural eye for color and composition.

“About eight months later we’re eating at the Red Onion and she said, ‘I’m so glad God let me live long enough to find out what I’m supposed to do with my life,’” said Pilkington.

Today Pat Pilkington is one of the most successful artists in the High Country. Her work can be seen at Blowing Rock Frameworks and Gallery and she recently finished a commission for Elk River.

Ed is excited about his work in the world premiere of Jan Karon’s Journey to Mitford and looks forward to a long relationship with the Blowing Rock Stage Company and the Hayes Center. He is currently teaching adult acting classes for the BRSC.

“That theatre has been full every single night,” said Pilkington. “I tell my jokes as Uncle Billy and they fall out of their chairs. The story is so well put together. Bob Inman and Ken Kay did a great job. I think Ken and the Blowing Rock Stage Company are going to find the future very bright over there.”