Carol Baish, managing director of Baltimore’s Theatre Project, died of cancer May 3 at her Chinquapin Park home. She was 85.
She worked closely with her husband, Philip Arnoult, who founded the arts group in 1971 as a part of Antioch College’s division in Baltimore. It began as Baltimore’s Free Theatre and remains a showcase for international and area theater.
Her husband said: “Carol was the love of my life. We were married for over 50 years. She wasn’t only my wife, she was my professional partner.”
Said a friend, Earl Arnett: “As managing director and a quiet, backstage presence in the enterprise, she assisted her husband in a wide range of avant-garde national and international theatrical productions as well as local community projects. In the theater’s precarious early years in the 1970s, she provided stability and common sense.”
Born in York County, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of Donald Baish and Gladys Baish. Ms. Baish graduated in 1960 as an English major from Juniata College, founded in 1876 by the Church of the Brethren in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
“Following in that church’s tradition she worked for peace and environmental health her entire life,” Mr. Arnett said.
She later obtained a master’s degree in English and American literature from the University of Maryland, College Park.
She met her future husband in Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s when she was managing editor of The American Scholar, a public affairs publication, and a divorced mother of three sons.
She and Mr. Arnoult began a romantic and business relationship that lasted for more than 50 years.
“Philip was the great impresario who did creative stuff while Carol was the one who reined him in and was practical. She would say, ‘Let’s think about this,’” said a friend, Albert “Al” DeSalvo. “She was the one who got into the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts and the finances.”
“My mother had many roles at Theatre Project. She handled the visas for the international traveling theater groups and she wrote numerous grant proposals,” said her son, Michael Baish.
“Carol was an intelligent, articulate human being who didn’t suffer fools gladly,” said a friend, Helen Szablya. “It was her deep compassion for the human condition that made her the behind-the-scenes supporter of Phil Arnoult’s vision of featuring groundbreaking theater arts.
“Her intelligence and excellent writing skills helped bring national grant funding for many significant projects, including Baltimore Voices, an oral history and a signature theater piece,” Ms. Szablya said. “We will all remember fondly her caviar pie that we relished at every theater opening at the Theatre Project in the 1970s and early ’80s.”
“Carol was the steady hand at Theatre Project,” said Anne Cantler Fulwiler, Theatre Project’s board chair and former director. “She kept all of us in line and made the magic happen.”
After retiring from Theatre Project, she and her husband formed the Center for International Theater Development.
“We spent over two decades having her manage a theater project between the U.S. and the Netherlands,” said her husband.
Ms. Baish created a lush environment in the Chinquapin Park neighborhood garden she worked in daily.
She also adopted dogs and cats from shelters.
“Or she found strays off the street,” Mr. Arnett said. “Typically she selected older animals with medical issues,” said her son, Michael. “She’d go to the shelters and take the hard cases, the animals that other people were not likely to take.”
Ms. Baish later became interested in family genealogy and organized an archive of her family’s letters. She often read a book a day.
Survivors include her husband, Philip Arnoult; three sons, Sean Brann, of Somerville, Massachusetts, Michael Brann, of Newton, Massachusetts, and Terry Brann, of Frederick; Philip Arnoult’s daughter and Carol Baish’s stepdaughter, Alison Arnoult Van Pelt, of Charlotte, North Carolina; a sister, Elaine Thomas, of Vanceboro, North Carolina; a brother, Michael Baish, of Skagway, Alaska; and five grandchildren.
A funeral Mass was held May 18 at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church.