Making an Impact – Dreams Really Do Come True
In the Making an Impact series, clients and services are featured to expand awareness of the wide array of help available at JFS and to ensure donors understand the lives they touch and the difference they make throughout the community.
Sean became a client through JFS’s contract with Ramsey County to provide case management services to people with disabilities. Upon his high school graduation, his JFS social worker worked tirelessly to get Sean into a program that met his needs, Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in St. Paul.
Interact helps Sean learn and practice skills via structured activities, skills that enhance his life and his perception of his ability to handle whatever may come along. Sean’s dream has always been to be an actor, and Interact provides the opportunity for him to study and practice acting all year long and to perform in their annual productions.
One of his Interact mentors told him about a local theater opportunity. Sean auditioned for the part and was cast in his first role outside his day program, the Minnesota Jewish Theater Company’s production of “O My God.” In this witty and touching play, Ella, a psychologist and single mother of a teenager living with autism, gets a visit from an unexpected new patient: God. Sean played the autistic teenage son, Lior. He worked hard to master the challenges of performing a subtle, serious part and even learned to play the cello for the role.
His new goal is to land a larger role in another local performance, and then on to Broadway! With his talent and determination, there’s no doubt he will conquer this goal too!