How a new production of The Government Inspector is opening up the theatre for all

The word disabled contains within it an interesting notion. If someone in a wheelchair is perfectly able to do something if the conditions are right, is it the person who is disabled, or is society responsible for dis-abling them?

If a person in a wheelchair can access a building thanks to the installation of a ramp, then are they suddenly enabled?

It is this way of looking at things that has helped to create a situation where a new production of Gogol’s The Government Inspector can make it to the stage of the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Ramps on the Moon is a network of seven theatres, including the Playhouse and Sheffield Theatres, which are dedicated to increasing opportunities for so-called disabled people. Using integrated audio description, captioning and British Sign Language, the new production of The Government Inspector is fully accessible for deaf and disabled audiences and actors.

Kiruna Stamell, who plays Anna in the production, has a rare form of dwarfism. She has appeared in the Ricky Gervais show Life’s Too Short, a number of stage plays and film director Baz Luhrmann created the role of La Petite Princesse for her in his movie Moulin Rouge.

“I’m very interested in disabled rights and disabled people’s activism,” she says. “I’m an idealist and would love a world that’s an equal playing field. Sometimes that means that disabled people need facilitation to have the barriers removed. You can’t just say ‘you’re all equal and good luck but I’m not putting a ramp in’. You need to say ‘you’re all equal and I will install a ramp to ensure equal access’.”

Stamell comes to Leeds next week in The Government Inspector. David Harrower has adapted the Nikolai Gogol comedy for a new audience for the production which comes to the West Yorkshire Playhouse on Wednesday.

The play, adapted by Deborah McAndrew for Northern Broadsides in 2012, tells the story of a government inspector due to arrive in a small Russian town, sending the town’s dodgy bureaucrats into a frenzy.

The mayor of the town has been taking kickbacks, he’s neglected his duties, the hospital is a health hazard, the school is a war zone, the soldiers don’t have matching trousers and the mayor never quite finished his building programme.

Director Roxana Silbert calls the play a “masterpiece I’ve always wanted to direct”. It might also have resonance for contemporary audiences, given that it’s set in a world of corruption where everyone’s moral compass has gone awry.

It is recognised as a great play, an Olivier-award winning writer adapting the work of one of history’s great satirists, but the real significance of this play is in the small steps it represents towards equality for actors of all backgrounds.

Stamell says: “I want to feel like the work and the art that I make explores what it is to be human and it reaches the understanding of that. And that’s why I believe the stories of disabled people – because we are people like everybody else – deserve to be told.

“There is also so much for the middle, the average, person to gain from learning and understanding about the experiences of those on the peripheries. If you are non-disabled today, anything could happen to you tomorrow and you could be joining our club and, rather than fearing our club or thinking our club is too hard and not sexy, it would be awesome if you recognised that our club is just as cool as yours but that we sometimes need reasonable adjustments to access the world.”

Even in a world as outwardly progressive and liberal as the world of theatre, there are still barriers, both literal and metaphorical. Equality is a long way off in all senses. British theatre, the perception tells us, is dominated by people from a typical background: white, middle-class and well educated. If you don’t fit into these boxes, the way into theatre has been barred –or at the very least, more difficult. Equality in terms of racial diversity is something theatres are striving towards. Ramps on the Moon will help balance another iniquity. Instead of looking at the imbalance as a problem to be solved, however, Stamell is urging those on the inside to consider it an opportunity. She says: “There is something special that the diversity of this cast brings. There’s an open attitude to problem-solving which is so refreshing and freeing to have in a rehearsal space rather than being in a room where everyone is fearful of getting it wrong.

“It inspires creativity because you are dealing with different needs – not radically different, they are just an extension of what it is to be human.” There are opportunities here for all of us.

“In a sense everything is fresher because you’re not looking at the same old bog standard. Me being physically different sometimes challenges men and particularly women who have not seen a woman whose body is non-conformist on the street.

“That’s why I think representation is so important because if you have more disabled people on television, in film and on stage, like we are in life, it’s less of a shock when someone with dwarfism walks into your local butcher. The idea is already planted that we are present.”

Thanks to initiatives like Ramps to the Moon, the moment when the non-conformists that Stamell describes, the moment where “we are present” is edging ever closer. Many would argue – finally.

Ramps to the Moon’s The Government Inspector is at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, April 20-30. Tickets 0113 213 7700. www.wyp.org.uk