Welcome back Katrina Kemp! Katrina is an actor, producer, activist, DJ, and intuitive from LA.
Katrina not only shares her own coming-of-age story as a person with pseudoachondroplasia but also speaks to the relatively new project of people with Dwarfism collecting their own history, free from the gaze of average-height people.
She explains how people with dwarfism were enslaved for centuries and how being forced to labor as circus performers still inform how they’re treated in the modern movie industry (and the world at large) today. Katrina traces the relationship between erasure and exploitation in media and reflects on how vital it was for her to find representation and community online growing up.
“We find each other deep, deep in the internet. But other people are finding us too,” Katrina says.
This sets the stage for our discussion of “Dear Average Height People,” a film Katrina is producing by director Aubrey Smalls. As far as Aubrey and Katrina know, this is the very first documentary comedy special to be directed and produced by people with Dwarfism. In fact, they haven’t been able to find ANY films, shows, or specials created by people with Dwarfism and urgently want that to change.
The film is about dwarfism, disability hate groups, agency, and freedom. It portrays a global network of people with dwarfism who may live far away from each other, but who live in deep solidarity. It illustrates the way obsessive hate groups target and harass people with Dwarfism online, as well as how platforms like Youtube encourage violence and monetize torment. It also depicts how talented, beautiful, funny, and diverse the Dwarfism community is around the world.
Listen to hear Katrina’s many insights about beauty, bodies, surveillance, her bone to pick with Stephen Spielberg, Britney Spears, L’Express, Diane Arbus, inhalants, and more…
“People experience epiphanies with me every day… every hour if I allowed it,” Katrina says.
Follow Katrina on IG, Twitter, Twitch, and Youtube. Please consider contributing what you can to “Dear Average Height People.” Pledge your support on Indiegogo here. Production crew volunteers, exhibition and performance spaces, and community partners are also welcome to donate resources.
+ For more Katrina on the pod, listen to our Britney Spears episode from 2021.
Thanks to Margot Padilla for engineering and editing this episode. Our show music is “Let Me Love You” by Dis Fantasy. Follow me on IG: @TSTAR7.
Recorded 10/3 at Pirate Studios Silverlake. Pirate is open 24/7 in Silverlake and West Adams, as well as all over the US, UK, Germany, and Ireland. They have DJ, rehearsal, and podcast studios for everyone to use. Book online and let yourself inside. Click here and use the code TIERNEY for $10 off your first booking. Write me: tierneytierneytierneytalks@gmail.com
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