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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Winter 2006 : Living Theater

Living Theater

by Linda Shapiro

Joan Calof's cluttered Roseville study could serve as a template for her busy, multi-faceted life. Paintings, prints, and masks collected from the far corners of the earth cover the walls, along with a family photo gallery, a plaque reading "In recognition of outstanding volunteer services in community mental health" (from a walk-in counseling center), and numerous posters from her more recent career as a monologist and performance artist.

For as long as she can remember, Calof (M.A. '53, M.S.W. '67) has been an intrepid explorer of the world at large, and of her own experience. "The most individualistic thing we can do becomes the thing that connects us to others,” says Calof. "My career as a social worker involved helping people shape their life stories. Now I am telling my own and others' stories.”

Part of a Jewish family descended from Eastern European immigrants, Calof was raised in Winnipeg and came to the U in 1949 to study child psychology. Working her way through school as a teaching assistant, she earned an M.A. in child welfare in 1953.

Her first job was in a treatment center for what were then called "disturbed" children. "I had been an overprotected child, so these kids came as a great shock,” says Calof. "One threw her arms around my neck. I was so pleased—until I discovered she'd stolen my brooch.”

After returning to the U for her M.S.W., Calof took on the world as a social worker at the Hennepin County Medical Center. "I dealt with people who wanted to kill presidents, me, themselves,” says an intrepid Calof, who loved being where the action was. "I was on one of the first suicide prevention phone lines.”

In 1984, at the age of 56, Calof took a couple of risky plunges: she went into private practice as a licensed independent clinical social worker and licensed psychologist, and she started writing.

“I sat at my old Remington portable typewriter with no idea of where I was heading. I developed carpal tunnel syndrome from writing about my failed marriage, the death of a good friend from cancer, the death of my father,” Calof recalls. "As I look back on it, I realize that I began writing out of a sense of loss.”

After a workshop with actor/writer Louise Smith in the late 1980's, Calof began shaping performance pieces about her family history and her experiences growing up and growing older—pieces that evolved into dramatic monologues and plays. Mixing autobiography with politics, history, and popular culture, Calof created highly idiosyncratic characters, including one based on the eccentric writer Ayn Rand and one based on her maternal grandmother, an adventurous malcontent who is forced to sit Shiva for herself.

Transforming lived experience

Calof transforms her experiences—in everything from dating to social work, sibling rivalry, and cross-cultural communication—into witty performance pieces with broad audience appeal. She incorporates vintage popular songs, Yiddish proverbs, and poignant experiences from her travels, such as her friendship with a guide in Vietnam who, abandoned by the Americans, nearly died in a communist re-education camp after the war.

She has received awards and commissions for her writing from the Minnesota Women's Press, The Loft, and The Playwright's Center, where she was selected as an associate playwright in 1997 and 2000. Over the past decade, she has performed in many venues, including Red Eye Theater, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Minnesota History Center, Theater Garage, and Patrick's Cabaret.

“My first time performing at the cabaret, I looked at the many young faces in the audience and said to myself: what do they want with my old-lady stories?" admits Calof, who has since become a frequent and popular performer there. "But I found that I, not my audience, was ageist.”

“Joan loves to try new things,” says Patrick Scully, a performance artist and founder of Patrick's Cabaret. "She puts herself in situations of having new experiences. That keeps her vital and engaging as a performer—and as a person.”

Scully also cites Calof's unique position as a Canadian Jew living in Minnesota. "Joan benefits from her perspective as an outsider,” says Scully. "While her works are highly personal, she employs the kind of objectivity about herself and the world that artists need to make good art. ”

Calof's recent gift of $100,000 to CLA's theater arts and dance department reflects her passionate belief in the arts as "a thermometer showing the health of a culture. I believe that communication and cross fertilization of the arts promotes freedom of expression in a society and celebrates the diversity of human experience. Nations that don't celebrate the arts disintegrate: Sparta is now just the name of a bike path, but Athenian art and architecture have survived.”

Calof also allows that her gift, part of which will create an annual scholarship, is her way of passing on her legacy to students. "I do not have children of my own, so nurturing young people in the arts is my bid for immortality.”