Kiruna: hitting the big time

From playing feisty disability-unfriendly Carrie in Cast Offs, to dancing her way to the top at the tender age of 14, and breaking boundaries by being cast in a popular soap opera role non-specifically for a disabled person, Kiruna Stamell has packed more flavours into her CV than there are in a bag of Skittles. But, she tells Cathy Reay, she’s only just begun to taste the rainbow

"I’m not disabled, I’m just short”, Carrie explains to the camera defiantly. The 3’8” 29-year old is standing outside a house that she can’t get into because she can’t reach the buzzer. Because she’s short, obviously, not disabled.

Kiruna Stamell played Carrie in the Channel 4 “mockumentary” Cast Offs at the end of 2009 but is quick to admit she doesn’t bear her character’s stubbornness. “God no, my disability politics are totally different,” says the Australian actress.

“I recognise myself as being disabled and I’m fine with that. But society is disabling in that it doesn’t enable giving the individual something they need for them to be in an accessible environment. Yeah, I find some things difficult because I’m disproportionate but it’s made my life difficult primarily because of social attitudes towards my disability.”

Cast Offs, a fictional programme in which six disabled people are marooned on an island, has been both applauded and criticised for being the first major television show to address the impact of social attitudes towards disability, towards minorities in general, using a disabled-only cast and written by two disabled writers. It is thought to have broken barriers for disabled people that want a career in front of the camera, and to work towards getting non-disabled people used to seeing disability onscreen.

Kiruna agrees: “I know it had an uphill battle in terms of people’s perceptions of what it was going to be; it doesn’t shy away from disability but doesn’t get castrated by the concept of it either. People came up to me and said it made them think about things they’d never thought of before, about the relationship between able-bodied and disabled people. I am really proud of it. It’s not perfect but it’s really bloody good.”

Though they are both a poignant reminder of the inclusion of disability in mainstream media, the role of Carrie is a far cry from Kiruna’s second most-recent television appearance as a teacher in EastEnders, a bit part that wasn’t originally written for a disabled actress. “It’s funny because that is one of my proudest achievements as an actress but as a script it’s probably one of the most banal!” she laughs.

“Because people see me as weird or unique based on my height, which is just one aspect of this body, doing a soap where it was just there with me, not denied but also not something people couldn’t get past, was one of the best things I could have done.”

With the introduction of David Proud in EastEnders, Kelly-Marie Stewart in Hollyoaks and Kitty McGeever in Emmerdale, 2009 was a fantastic year for disability in soap. But Kiruna thinks getting disabled people on television is still a huge struggle: “These people are sticking out to us because it’s such a rare occurrence; it is good but it’s just the beginning. I was lucky when I did EastEnders as it wasn’t an audition specifically for short-statured actors so I was able to circumvent all the political debate about my height. In the past, before a disabled character has been cast they’ve “ummed” and “ahhed” instead of just doing it. It needs to be more spontaneous.”

Spontaneity might have paid off that time, but Kiruna hasn’t always been so lucky. As a professional dancer from the age of 14, and involved in theatre from almost as young an age, she has gone from one audition to the next her entire adult life. “I have had a couple of instances where people haven’t been open to my disability but they’ve almost always let me audition. The only ones that have never mentioned it at all, that haven’t cared, have been dance-based.”

Winning a dance competition when she was 14 is a large part of the reason Kiruna believes she’s been confident enough to try and get work on stage and screen. “My tap teacher came up to me and said ‘Kiruna your feet absolutely sang’; I’d never felt so amazing in my entire life. Then the moments that followed that, when you realise there are directors and teachers willing to work with you, it’s such a basic thing, but as any disabled person in the arts will know people constantly turn around and say ‘why bother when there are no roles for you?’”

Moments like the one in 2000 when legendary director Baz Luhrmann cast her as La Petite Princesse in his Oscar-winning film adaptation of Moulin Rouge, perhaps? “The fact that he gave me an audition, that he was willing to talk to me [when he didn’t need to]… it made me feel like I could actually open some of these doors.”

Film, television, dance, theatre; Kiruna has a different audience watching her whatever she does. And unfortunately they haven’t always been the nicest bunch. “There was this one time when a group of school kids was watching a Graeae [disability arts company] play and they heckled me. It had nothing to do with what was going on onstage, it was purely because of my height that they were being so vile; their mobile phones were out and they were filming us to put on YouTube for others to comment.

I remember, later, being in my hotel room by myself and I looked out the hotel window and imagined myself falling past. I was having a rough time. But it makes you stronger and you have to realise the attitudes of a lot of people out there are unfortunately still quite backwards and aggressive.”

Kiruna is definitely of the belief that bad experiences only make you stronger, and she certainly hasn’t been put off theatre by unsavoury reactions. “It showed the importance of visibility of disability because so many people do genuinely find it confronting.

“I have the right to do this. I want to be in a musical, a permanent character in a soap opera, to be cast a major role in a West End play; I’d love to play Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream because she has this brilliant speech where she thinks people are having a go at her because of her height, how cool would it be if the person playing her was actually short? I’d like to do something freaky and weird like Little Red Riding Hood, with all the social implications of Don’t Look Now. I guess I just want more, more of everything!”

Something tells us she’s going to get it, too.

• Kiruna will appear as the character Starvling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bolton Octagon Theatre between 4th February – 6th March. For more information and to book tickets visit http://www.octagonbolton.co.uk/MidsummerNights.asp