“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” These words from Toni Cade Bambara guide Kristen Adele Calhoun’s work as a playwright and performer. She is the founding Program Director of ArtChangeUS and co-producer of InterFest, an intersectional arts and ideas festival that began at the Harlem School of the Arts. She is the Assistant Editor of Contemporary Plays by Women of Color and her play, Canfield Drive, about Ferguson, the murder of Mike Brown and the revolutionary power of healing in the face of oppression, had a rolling world premiere in 2019 at the St. Louis Black Rep and The National Black Theatre Festival. Other plays include A Pocket Full of Dandelions (Denver Center Theatre Company), Quilombo (5280 Artists Coop), With These Hands (Black American West Museum), and Aint Gonna Let Nobody (NAACP).
Off-Broadway & regional acting credits include Jackie and Me (Denver Center); Skeleton Crew (Premiere Stages); A Raisin in the Sun (Clarence Brown Theatre); Myrna in Transit (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Clybourne Park (Geva Theatre & Cleveland Playhouse); and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Shadow Theatre Co.)
Television and film acting credits include House of Cards, Elementary, The Sinner, Orange is the New Black, and Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, House of Cards and Everything I Whispered to Dorothy.
A native of Dallas, Texas, she is a graduate of the University of North Texas and the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Kristen is currently reading, writing and living in Accra, Ghana.