Mason Gross alumna makes name as actress in television, theatre
As a child, Kristen Calhoun said she thought she was going to grow up and become a doctor, missionary and professional actress.
At some point, Calhoun, a Dallas native and Mason Gross School of the Arts (MGSA) alumna, whittled her trinity of ambitions into just one pursuit –– acting — and doggedly set out to chase her dreams.
Calhoun, who starred in school plays, enrolled in acting classes, pitched plays in her backyard and debuted in her first on-screen film, a 1996 HBO miniseries entitled “America’s Dream” at the age of 12, graduated from the University of North Texas with a BFA in acting and went on to attend the Mason Gross School of the Arts starting in 2009.
“I met her in one of my first acting classes,” said Melissa Firlit, a Mason Gross alumna and Calhoun’s former roommate in graduate school. “She had a lot of energy. She was just coming from Colorado and she just traveled to Brazil, I remember, just before school started, and she just seemed ready for the challenge of grad school and what Mason Gross is.”
Calhoun and Firlit, who studied acting and directing, respectively, graduated in 2012 and eventually moved an hour north into New York City, where they would put down the roots of their professional careers.
Calhoun, professionally known as Kristen Adele, would go on to act as Josephine in Netflix’s Emmy- and Oscar-nominated series, “Orange is the New Black,” the Bishop’s daughter in CBS’s “The Good Wife,” and Kate in NBC’s “The Mysteries of Laura.”
She would also make a name for herself in New York City regional theatre, where she would take on roles in plays such as “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “A Raisin in the Sun” and “The Crucible.”
But one of her more recent accomplishments, and one she said she is particularly proud of, is her independently-created Web series “The Struggle,” a chronicle of two actresses, one black and one white, looking to secure healthcare, delve into the New York City dating scene and make a mark for themselves in the city that never sleeps.
Calhoun said the idea for "The Struggle" emerged when she and fellow actress Jessica Kitchens were working on a play together in Rochester.
“It was freezing cold, it was almost polar vortexes, it was horrible," she said.
The brutal weather considerably stymied the creative process, but Calhoun said she and Kitchens were able to excavate the idea of their next web series through their mutual disgruntlement.
Once the pair returned to New York City, they sought production agencies, meeting with Mitch Lewis, co-founder of creative production house, “The Kloons,” whom Calhoun and Kitchens hoped would be able to rev the idea for “The Struggle” into existence.
Over lunch, Calhoun said her and Kitchens’ proposal to Lewis to produce “The Struggle” sagged — but it gave rise to what would invite an uncharted and liberating chapter of Calhoun’s life.
“(Lewis) told us, he said, you know, make (“The Struggle”) yourself,” Calhoun said. “Don’t wait, don’t hire a production company, nobody’s going to care about it as much as you will.”
Calhoun said she was nervous at the prospect of producing “The Struggle,” especially since she had no experience in directing or producing and was still holding down a job at The Ford Foundation and working with nonprofit organization Artists4Change.
But after Lewis reminded her that the experience she would amass producing a show during their first year would be “priceless,” she took the plunge, simultaneously working as an actress, producer and director.
After cranking out the first season of “The Struggle,” which has nine episodes, Calhoun said the Web series gave her the strength and creativity to carve out her own niche in the entertainment industry.
“I think it’s crucial for artists of color to create their own work, to tell their own stories, and take the reins of their career in that way,” she said. “(The Struggle’s given me) … agency (and) the freedom … to turn down other parts because I’ve found my own artistic voice.”
In addition, Calhoun’s step into her own lane has let her separate the image she wants for herself as an actress from the image casting directors sometimes ask her to adopt, she said.
“I’ve come across all of that in auditions, where people say, ‘Can you make it more urban?’ or ‘Can you black it up?’ Just all kinds of stuff. I had a director tell me that any time I expressed any sort of emotion in the scene, ‘You just seem angry, it just seems like you’re too angry.’ So he really limited me in terms of my choices, and I think that was in large part because I’m black.”
To that end, another reason why “The Struggle” was created was because the roles for women of color, or women in general, are very limited, and even more so for women of color, Calhoun said.
“As an artist of color, as a black person in America, there were people who died in order for me to have the opportunities that I have,” she said. “To squander that, or to waste that, would be seminal.”
She attributed her abundance of opportunities afforded to her as an actress to her faith, which she said was instilled in her from an early age while growing up in a Christian household and followed her to Rutgers, where she continued to attend church at Jacob’s Well in North Brunswick during graduate school.
“Being an actress is really hard, so it’s nice to feel that there’s something greater than myself working for me to succeed,” she said.
Her other supporters and sources of inspiration, such as colleagues, peers and professors, hail largely from Rutgers, she said.
She said she continues to stay in contact with many of her best friends from Rutgers, and corresponds with her former professors, a number of whom she fosters warm relationships with.
“Because the work with actors is so personal, those teachers really shape who you are in a very real way,” she said. “They have the ability to alter your actual personality and character.”
