Celebrating Jeanne Calvit and 30 Years of Creating Art and Changing Perceptions of Disability

Jeanne Calvit founded Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1996. Now retired, she credited ICI with much of her success during a recent event held in her honor. She is writing an autobiography.

It was part history lesson, part retirement party, and all heart at an evening celebrating the vision and work of Jeanne Calvit, founder of Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose mission is to create art that challenges society’s perceptions of disability and build community connections.

The June 30 event was hosted by the Institute on Community Integration, with well-known writer and storyteller Kevin Kling serving as emcee. The evening featured performances and reflections from Interact artists and supporters. The Institute has collaborated with Interact for decades, from creating training videos for the direct support workforce to hosting gallery installations showcasing the work of Interact’s visual artists.

Interact is celebrating its 30th anniversary and states it is the only performing arts organization to offer the full-time, daily practice of professional-level theater and visual arts to support the creative growth of artists with disabilities. Since 1996, Interact has produced dozens of original theatrical works and mounted more than four dozen visual art exhibitions.

Creativity was the main theme of the celebration.

ICI’s marketing and communications director, Jerry Smith, introduced the event and spoke about his long history with Interact dating back to the early 1990s.

“What struck me then—and still strikes me today—is that Interact never seemed interested in making ‘important theater.’ They were making great theater. The art came first, and social change followed naturally,” Smith said.

Smith has created videos to capture Interact performances and profiled some of the company's actors. Charlie Lakin, the former director of ICI’s Research and Training Center on Community Living, helped Calvit as she was launching Interact. “Without Charlie’s help, I’m sure I would not have succeeded,” Calvit said. “At the time, I knew nothing about how bureaucracy and government funding operated, and he helped me write the prospectus. He was a big supporter of Interact.”

First Someone Had to Believe

Four Interact actors began the evening by performing the song, “First Someone Had to Believe.” Kevin Kling told the audience, “The song was perfect because Jeanne helped people to see the deeper side of themselves and encouraged performers to believe in their talents.”

Kling shared his personal story of his involvement with Interact dating back to the 1990s and how Calvit reassured him after a near-fatal 2001 motorcycle accident that resulted in a brain injury.

“Because of the accident, I was not sure I had the capacity to remember lines,” Kling recalled. “Jeanne visited me and said she wanted me to be in her next play. I was unsure, but she knew just what to say to get my attention. Jeanne said, ‘Kevin, I want you to play a god.’ That was just what I needed to hear,” Kling said with a smile.

Kling played a god in the play “Cloud Cuckooland” and toured England with the Interact theater company.

Bringing Radical Inclusion to the World

Calvit and Interact are known for having a vision of radical inclusion that celebrates the talents of performers with and without disabilities. That vision has been shared internationally as Interact has performed in Denmark, Thailand, England, Sweden, Norway, Australia, and other countries.

Two company members, Mike Brindley and Matt Dahlstrom, had the opportunity to perform in Thailand and shared poems they wrote after being inspired by their trip. They were joined by their mothers, who spoke about how Interact changed the trajectory of their adult sons’ lives.

Mike’s mother recalled how her son previously had a job “stomping cardboard,” so it could be recycled, and was mistakenly seen as someone without creativity. She said working at Interact exposed her son to Shakespeare, world travel, friends, and tapping into his own talents for performing and writing.

A Book and a Legacy

Calvit retired in 2024 and is working on a book to capture stories from her experience at Interact, including profiles of performers and other company members who have passed away.

“I had a free-range childhood growing up in Louisiana. Even then, I was organizing performances like a neighborhood circus or haunted house,” Calvit said. “Eventually, I traveled to Europe and made my way to Paris, where I received training in theater and performing by the world-renowned actor, mime, and theater instructor, Jacques Lecoq.”

In the early 1980s, Calvit was invited to create plays with people with disabilities at Camp New Hope in McGregor, Minnesota. She was also affiliated with the Pillsbury United Neighborhood Services. Those experiences inspired her to start Interact and sparked a new understanding of how people with disabilities could create art.

“At that time, no one was doing original theater created by artists with disabilities,” Calvit said. Under Calvit’s leadership, Interact Center has won two Ivey Awards, as well as awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. It received a 2018 Innovation Award from the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

Calvit’s autobiography will include stories of people whose lives were changed by working with Interact. “I want to include some stories from the projects in Thailand, Congo, and Australia,” Calvit said. “Writing a book is an ambitious project, but after the celebration event at ICI, I was left feeling that people are interested in my stories.”