Theater in Minneapolis integrates disabled, nondisabled actors into productions so "they look like America"

From The AP:

MINNEAPOLIS -- An orange-haired woman wearing a laurel wreath and a Grecian tunic sits on a man's knee at center stage, pretending to be his ventriloquist's dummy as he performs a song. With perfect timing and expressions, she mimes to his words, flinging her arms and legs.

As the play unfolds, the woman's Down syndrome seems to melt away at Interact Theater, a troupe that for 18 years has sprinkled its casts with nonprofessional actors who may be blind, have a traumatic brain injury or use a wheelchair. The Minneapolis group aims to break down audience perceptions of people with disabilities.

"That's a big part of the vision," said Interact founder and artistic director Jeanne Calvit. "It's not disability theater per se. It's theater that includes actors with and without disabilities."

Interact's current production, "Madame Majesta's Miracle Medicine Show," tells the backstage stories of the performers, freaks and snake-oil salesmen of an Old West traveling tent show. About two-thirds of the cast have some disability.

Lhea Jaeger, 27, of Andover, Minn., another Interact cast member with Down syndrome, plays a medicine maker and acts as a shill in "Madame Majesta." Her six years on stage with the troupe have been "a dream come true," she said.

"I feel like a star, I guess," Jaeger said.

"Madame Majesta" aims for humor in some scenes, with one featuring a man named Blubber Boy squaring off against his rotund Spanish rival in a gut-slapping competition. Both actors have Down syndrome. Calvit says it's a way for actors with disabilities to show off their comedic chops — not to humiliate them.

"We wouldn't have put them in theater if they didn't have an awareness of what they are doing," Calvit said.

After graduating from the International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq in Paris, Calvit landed 30 years ago in northern Minnesota, where she helped a camp for the disabled put on a show. She went on to found Interact in 1992 and later expanded it to also show visual artwork by artists with disabilities.

The Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts has a staff of 26. Its shows are written by the cast and developed through improvisation. The company has produced more than two dozen original plays and does two shows a year.

Dozens of theater companies use disabled actors, including troupes in Cincinnati, Washington and New York. But there still are too few roles for them, said Ike Schambelan, founder and artistic director of New York's off-Broadway Theater Breaking Through Barriers.

Casting directors are "perfectly willing to put an able-bodied person in a disabled role when I cannot believe they could not find a person for the role who uses a wheelchair," he said.

Interact's creative partners have included Kevin Kling, a Minnesota storyteller, playwright and public radio essayist who overcame his own disability to establish a successful career. Kling was born with a shortened left arm due to a genetic disorder, then survived a 2001 motorcycle crash that paralyzed his right arm.

"This looks like America," Kling said of Interact.