Who We Support

ABOUT INTERACT

Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts is a non-profit arts organization offering full-time creative practice at the professional level to adults with disabilities.

“My daughter Naa has Down syndrome. Her first job was cleaning a local mall in the early mornings before the stores opened – before anyone would see her. I was told she was lucky to have this job, but I knew that she had more to offer the world. And then I found Interact. My daughter is now recognized as a talented artist, bowing along side her colleagues to standing ovations from audiences who watch her dance in Interact Theater productions.”

NaaAbashie Moreaux, Proud mother of an Interact performing artist

THEIR MISSION

Since 1996, Interact’s mission to create art that challenges perceptions of disability has opened up new horizons for artists with disabilities from whom very little may have been expected, but whose lives have now been transformed as talented, creative, contributing members of our communities. Audiences who experience our work are also enriched by exciting creative accomplishments that celebrate our shared humanity.

“I began to feel an empowerment and solidarity with the performers and it felt like I was entering a home I didn’t know I had.”

Actor, storyteller and humorist, Kevin Kling
Describing his first experience as an actor with Interact

WHO THEY ARE

Interact is the only organization of its kind nationally or internationally – a place where over 125 artists create ground-breaking original theater and extraordinary visual arts each and every day. Interact is multi-cultural and intergenerational,
and we embrace the entire spectrum of disability labels. New artists seek us out as the only place they can fully develop their creative lives. Experienced artists take on new challenges and raise the bar of their own self-expectations.

Everyone who participates in Interact’s work – artists and audiences alike – expands their ideas of what is possible through the transformative power of the arts.

“Art has become central to my life, providing a vehicle for self expression, confidence, focus and healing. Painting and drawing has helped me to negotiate the tentacles of mental illness and has given me a connection to life that my illness often thwarts.”

Gail Harbeck, Interact studio artist since 2003