How to make cloth collision (not clothing) interact with player?

I’m trying to make a curtain that separates two rooms. When the player (first person view with capsule collision) walks through the corridor I would prefer if the cloth reacted to the player somewhat realistically. I was reading and experimenting with Nv Cloth but could only get the physics to work if contained in the same actor/mesh even though there’s a checkbox labeled “Interacts with environment”. Maybe that’s meant for the soon-to-be legacy APEX?

Some things to consider
-Using engine version 4.16.3
-Using blender 2.78b
-I’m willing to try other approaches if practical as apposed to physics and cloth collision