Focus is on arts, not disabilities

Jaehn Clare vividly remembers one of her auditions for a part in a play.

She rolled onto the stage in her wheelchair and began to read the script. She said she was halted by the director, who said there were no “cripples” in the play. “Why are you here?” she remembers him asking.

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Leita Cowart / Special

Elizabeth Labbe-Webb (left) is the executive director of VSA Arts of Georgia, and Jaehn Clare is the agency’s director of artistic development.

“To audition for the play,” she replied.

She didn’t get the part.

Elizabeth Labbe-Webb was told she would be the perfect candidate to head VSA Arts of Georgia, a nonprofit organization that promotes the arts for and by people who are disabled or have low incomes.

Labbe-Webb took the job as executive director not because she uses a wheelchair but because she has a rare combination of credentials: a career as a working theater artist and an MBA.

Both women spend nearly all their waking hours in wheelchairs, yet neither sees anything limiting while doing their jobs. Labbe-Webb, 42, was born with cerebral palsy. Clare, 49, has used a wheelchair since 1980, when she was injured in a fall from a theater balcony ladder.

“We use the arts as a bridge to ensure the full citizenship of people,” Labbe-Webb said.

The organization provides donated tickets to community arts events to nonprofit organizations that serve people with disabilities or who have low incomes.

VSA Arts of Georgia also serves as an outlet for artists who are disabled or have low incomes as well, helping them advance their careers. The Arts for All gallery in the Healy Building downtown showcases their work to the public. The organization reaches 165,000 people a year, Labbe-Webb said, and has a budget of about $500,000.

But she is quick to point out that the organization and its artists must be qualified to exhibit or perform.

“How good are you?” she asks of artists. “It’s about the art first for us.”

Labbe-Webb’s goal for VSA Arts of Georgia is to make the organization be known primarily as an arts organization with artists who happen to have a disability or be low income.

Labbe-Webb said she and her staff of four people also help demystify the process of complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act for arts organizations. It’s more than just adding ramps into a building or providing spaces in an auditorium for wheelchairs, she said.

It includes providing signers for people who are deaf or just asking people who are disabled what they need as reasonable accommodations.

Clare is the organization’s director of artistic development, its arts education arm that supports educators who work with people with disabilities and provides arts residencies in schools.

“We teach art, and we use art to teach something else,” Labbe-Webb said. If an artist has a disability, “they’re just there. They’re there to teach art, and the disability comes along for the ride.”

Alternative casting, such as Clare’s experience with the audition, is another issue the organization addresses. While many theaters are colorblind when it comes to casting by race, “the same conversation rarely happens with people with disabilities,” Labbe-Webb said.

Labbe-Webb, who has worked as a theatrical director, also has felt the sting of being seen in a wheelchair.

Initially, her promotion photos showed only a headshot, but when a new one was made showing the edge of her chair, “My career collapsed.”

Labbe-Webb has received critical acclaim for her directing in smaller theaters. But she was unable to break into bigger productions.

“Every time someone met me, my work was devalued because I bring my own furniture,” she said.

Part of the reason Labbe-Webb said she came to Atlanta and VSA Arts of Georgia is because “I’ve got to help fix this, so nobody coming after me has to go through what I’ve gone through.”

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