{"id":61724,"date":"2025-09-13T13:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61724\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T13:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:41:10","slug":"ive-cried-so-many-times-because-its-my-life-its-difficult-to-watch-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61724\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve cried so many times, because it\u2019s my life. It\u2019s difficult to watch\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a high-ceilinged room in the bowels of the Gate<\/a>, with Samuel Beckett looking on from a portrait on the wall, the writer and academic Katriona O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> and the playwright Sonya Kelly<\/a> are talking about the stage adaptation of Poor.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s bestselling memoir<\/a> chronicled her traumatic childhood in abject poverty and her unlikely ascent out of it, through education, sparking conversations about social inequities that are still ongoing. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my story, but it\u2019s a lot of people\u2019s story,\u201d as O\u2019Sullivan puts it, sitting on a sofa at the Dublin theatre after changing from her photo-shoot outfit into a more comfortable pink Oasis T-shirt.<\/p>\n

The Gate was not the first to approach her with the idea of adapting her compelling book. She has been understandably hesitant in the past. \u201cLike any person who has been through trauma, I\u2019m hypervigilant. I need to know that people understand, that they get the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The success of Poor was that it transcended the often mawkish misery-lit genre, pointing to the unfairness of a system that rewards the already privileged and further subjugates the disadvantaged. \u201cIt was me saying \u2018Excellence is everywhere, opportunity is not,\u2019 but it\u2019s also me talking about the loss of my mam and my dad and how they weren\u2019t served well. I wanted to make sure the Gate got that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poor tells the story of O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s life in Coventry and Birmingham, where she spent her childhood with four siblings and heroin-addicted Irish-born parents.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Lynn Ruane reviews Poor the book: What will you do to change society for people like this?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Alongside the dysfunction were bright moments, including a nursery teacher called Miss Arkinson, who taught O\u2019Sullivan, \u201cthe smelly kid\u201d, how to wash and left clean underwear for her. There was another teacher, Mr Pickering, who encouraged her to take GCSEs (the equivalent of the Junior Certificate), and a youth worker who noticed her love of reading. Still, by the age of 15 she was pregnant and homeless, eventually moving with her baby son, John, to her father\u2019s native Dublin.<\/p>\n

A young mother with addiction issues, O\u2019Sullivan spent years in chaos and dysfunction before recovery and a chance meeting on O\u2019Connell Bridge led her to join Trinity College Dublin<\/a>\u2019s access programme. She graduated with a first-class degree in psychology and later completed a PhD. Dr Katriona O\u2019Sullivan is now based at Maynooth University<\/a>, where she oversees the Stem Passport for Inclusion programme, which addresses unequal access to courses and careers among people from underserved communities.<\/p>\n

She is married to Dave \u2013 who features prominently in Poor \u2013 and is a mother. Hers is a remarkable and rare story, and you can see how she\u2019d be sensitive to how it might be told.<\/p>\n

\"KatrionaKatriona O’Sullivan: ‘I want it to be accessible, but also I want privileged people to come and see this.’ Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

The initial approach came from Thomas Conway, the Gate\u2019s new-work manager. \u201cThe first thing he said to me was, \u2018We are in Dublin 1, where you got your shit together, where you lived, where you loved, where you lost. Nobody from there comes here, and we want to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was, it turned out, the perfect pitch. \u201cThat sold me. They were really wonderful from the beginning. I said, \u2018Wow, imagine if we could fill the Gate with loads of chubby Katrionas from Dublin. Imagine if we could fill the Gate with poor people and they could actually recognise themselves on stage.\u2019\u201d She beams, delighted by the prospect.<\/p>\n

Sonya Kelly had not read the book when Conway approached her about adapting it. \u201cThomas and I went for a walk around Parnell Square which ended at the bookshop on Parnell Street. He went in, bought the book and handed it to me, and I went away with it,\u201d Kelly says. The copy she has in her hands now is the one she received that day.<\/p>\n

Kelly is often asked to adapt work. \u201cThere\u2019s a responsibility to it,\u201d she says. \u201cI decided if I got to the end of the book and didn\u2019t know what to do, I wouldn\u2019t take on the job. I knew I didn\u2019t want to waste this woman\u2019s time. But I got to the book\u2019s dedication page, which read \u2018To me, aged seven. I\u2019ve got you,\u2019 and I knew what I was going to do. Sometimes you get lucky like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got you,\u201d this exchange between the older and the younger Katriona, forms the basis of the dramatisation. \u201cIt\u2019s a pact with herself. It\u2019s a promise. It\u2019s the younger version of herself and the older version making sure they get to the final page. So I thought, there lies the jeopardy in the stage production.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing into the adaptation, I had a set of rules, and rules make things elegant, creatively. In the first half of the play, older Katriona has got younger Katrina. In the second half of the play, younger Katriona has got the older woman. So that\u2019s the way I shaped all of the events in the play through this promise, this covenant.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Our house was wild and unpredictable… I was starved and cold and unloved\u2019: An extract from PoorOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s feeling that her book was in safe hands only grew as Kelly worked on the script. <\/p>\n

\u201cCan I tell her the Annaghmakerrig story?\u201d O\u2019Sullivan asks. <\/p>\n

\u201cTell her all the stories,\u201d Kelly replies, smiling.<\/p>\n

The Annaghmakerrig story is about how Kelly went off to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre<\/a>, the artists\u2019 retreat by Annaghmakerrig Lough, in Co Monaghan, to work on the second draft of the script. She\u2019d just arrived and put her computer on the table when she got a call from Conway, at the Gate.<\/p>\n

Kelly immediately thought it was to tell her that O\u2019Sullivan had changed her mind about the adaptation, but just then there was a knock at the door. It was O\u2019Sullivan \u2013 who, it turned out, was in the room above Kelly, working on her second book, Hungry. \u201cWe fell about the place laughing,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says of the coincidence.<\/p>\n

Kelly describes how, as she worked away in her room, she was \u201cabsorbing the energy of this woman by osmosis, going through some of the most harrowing experiences no human being should ever have to go through, and upstairs all I could hear was loud music and this woman singing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m loud,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says, laughing.<\/p>\n

\"KatrionaKatriona O’Sullivan, whose memoir Poor is being staged at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill<\/p>\n

The serendipity was to prove productive. Each evening Kelly would tell O\u2019Sullivan where she was in her story, and sometimes she\u2019d ask questions. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really respectful, the tone of the questions. That\u2019s what mattered to me,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says. \u201cShe came with an open heart \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m sorry, can I ask you this?\u2019 \u2013 and that sense of \u2018I don\u2019t want to hurt you\u2019 which is how everything has been underpinned in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly understood the story at a level nobody else had, according to O\u2019Sullivan. \u201cShe didn\u2019t only see the trauma: she heard the music in the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Fleetwood Mac<\/a> album that punctuates O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s childhood; at one point Kelly told her about how that album \u2013 \u201cthis beautiful music \u2013 was made in the most crazy of circumstances, against a backdrop of addiction and madness in the band\u201d, O\u2019Sullivan says. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018This reminds me of your life, this beautiful person with all this madness going on, and you are the result of that.\u2019 And I was, like, oh my God, she f**king sees it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier drafts contained a lot taken verbatim from the book, but after the first read-through of the play O\u2019Sullivan told Kelly, \u201cI trust you. Just do your thing: bring it to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KatrionaKatriona O’Sullivan and Aisling O’Mara, who plays the adult Katriona in the stage adaptation of Poor. Photograph: Ailbhe O’Donnell <\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s input was crucial, according to Kelly. She would pick things up in the script that others would miss. \u201cI\u2019ve actually been able to be really creative in this, haven\u2019t I?\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says to O\u2019Kelly now. \u201cCreative executive producer. It\u2019s the most natural calling for you,\u201d Kelly replies.<\/p>\n

Kelly says that when you rehearse a new play \u201cyou have to be across things at a granular level, because it\u2019s never been done before. It\u2019s not like an Ibsen, where you can hop coins off it. You have to be awake to how it\u2019s not serving the original material and act quite quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s rehearsed in the rehearsal room, but it\u2019s made on the stage, so we\u2019re going into tech and into preview and, whoa, the pieces have to move around again. That constant openness to seeing what it isn\u2019t and what it should be has to stay alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping Sonya will one day be happy with it,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says, laughing. \u201cThe other day I came in and it was the end piece, which is so beautiful. I cried. I\u2019ve cried so many times though this process, because it\u2019s my life. It\u2019s really difficult to watch. But the ending was so beautiful, and everyone clapped, and then Sonya said, \u2018Can we just add this?\u2019 I don\u2019t know if it will ever feel finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, this book means an awful lot to an awful lot of people,\u201d Kelly says. \u201cSo there\u2019s a duty of care to not wreck it for the people who value how it has changed their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

This brings up something for O\u2019Sullivan, who describes herself as a direct person. She says she wasn\u2019t sure at the beginning whether the theatre knew how many people loved the book. \u201cSo I said to the Gate at one point, \u2018This is a brilliant book that sold over 200,000 copies. You\u2019re going to make a lot of money from this. So let\u2019s not talk about it like it\u2019s a charitable endeavour.\u2019<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I sat drinking in the knowledge, and for the first time in my life I felt alive\u2019: Katriona O\u2019Sullivan on her Trinity access programmeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause sometimes the language around it might have been a bit \u2018We\u2019re doing a good thing for the poor people.\u2019 And I\u2019m, like, \u2018No you\u2019re f**king not. You\u2019re going to make a lot of money out of this.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Gate was \u201cinundated\u201d when the play was announced, O\u2019Sullivan says. \u201cIt smashed box-office records, and I got an email from someone in the Gate saying, \u2018You were absolutely right: this was the best business decision we\u2019ve made.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan often talks on Instagram, sometimes while styling her hair or working out at the gym, about injustices. \u201cI\u2019m lucky. I can express my views,\u201d she says. \u201cI would be looked at \u2013 as some women like me are \u2013 as being a difficult woman. I\u2019m not difficult, but I don\u2019t want to be hurt and I don\u2019t want to be taken advantage of, and I am very protective of myself and of little me.\u201d<\/p>\n

How has the adaptation handled some of the book\u2019s more harrowing scenes? I\u2019m thinking particularly of the sexual assault O\u2019Sullivan suffered as a seven-year-old and the reaction to it from her mother, Tilly, who was a sex worker.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, well, he raped me, too,\u201d Tilly said when her daughter disclosed the assault by one of the men who hung around their home. O\u2019Sullivan was about the same age when she came across her father, Tony, lying unconscious, a needle in his flesh, after an overdose.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan says they were conscious, given that one in four people in Ireland has been sexually abused, that the rape scene could be triggering for the audience. \u201cSo I was concerned about it, but it\u2019s been done perfectly and respectfully. It\u2019s the same with my dad. That\u2019s a really important scene in my life, and the play doesn\u2019t shy away from it. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe did have a conversation about the prostitution scene. There\u2019s still a very complicated feeling of protection towards my mam, and sex work is something people often don\u2019t understand. But I think what is really lovely about the traumatic scenes is how Sonya has been able to connect them through my adult life: the voices that occur during those really traumatic times are an echo throughout the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see me as a young woman making mistakes with men, but you also hear the shadow of the child, and it\u2019s done so artistically I think it\u2019s going to be really powerful for the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tilly is one of the most important characters in the story \u201cand in my life, obviously\u201d, O\u2019Sullivan says. \u201cThe point of Poor is for the audience to understand why women end up in the situations they do. And that scene with my dad is about how my dad was treated by people in services rather than what my dad did.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she doesn\u2019t want audiences to get the wrong idea. \u201cIt\u2019s not a gruesome play \u2013 there is loads of light and love.\u201d<\/p>\n

We head into the rehearsal room to watch the actors at work. Hilda Fay<\/a> plays O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s mother, Aidan Kelly portrays her father, and Aisling O\u2019Mara is the adult Katriona. A lively ensemble, including Thommas Kane Byrne<\/a> and Ghaliah Conroy<\/a>, play all the other characters.<\/p>\n

The two Katrionas, younger and older, are together at the beginning of the play, addressing the audience directly, entreating them to come along on the traumatic but ultimately hopeful adventure of O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s life. \u201cAre you ready?\u201d they ask each other and the audience before their journey begins.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan is proud of the fact that there is \u201ca diverse cast who will be playing to diverse audiences\u201d. She says that 600 tickets have been given \u201cto poor people, and hundreds more are being discounted. There are two showings for disadvantaged women and another for groups in addiction services.<\/p>\n

\"Poor:Poor: Keiren Hamilton-Amos Thommas Kane Byrne, Hilda Fay, Mary Murray and Ghaliah Conroy at rehearsals. Photograph: Ailbhe O’Donnell <\/p>\n

\u201cI want it to be accessible, but also I want privileged people to come and see this, people who can afford \u20ac60 for a ticket, so they can learn something.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is, she points out, \u201ca strange thing to see your life brought to life on stage when you are actually alive and still quite young\u201d. Recently, the cast were interviewing her, asking about her childhood, to gain context for their interpretation of the characters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s heavy … It hasn\u2019t been an easy decision,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says of agreeing to the stage adaptation. \u201cI\u2019ve done it because I want to change things. I want to change how people feel about themselves. I want to change policy. I want a girl to sit in that theatre and think, \u2018Maybe I wasn\u2019t to blame.\u2019 I want some privileged person to sit there and go, \u2018Oh God, I need to do more here.\u2019 And the cost to me is worth it in terms of the longer gain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play is directed by R\u00f3is\u00edn McBrinn<\/a>, the Gate\u2019s artistic head. After a certain amount of scepticism \u2013 \u201cshe is quite posh,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan explains \u2013 the author has been amazed by McBrinn\u2019s sensitivity and insight while shepherding the story on to the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo witness the journey she\u2019s been on, I never felt …\u201d O\u2019Sullivan pauses, tears in her eyes not for the first time in the conversation. \u201cI never felt so much care from somebody who I thought would never get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did this revelation chip away at the working-class chip on her shoulder? \u201cWell, the chip was put there. I was stood on by them people, so it deserves to be there, but I\u2019ve also learned that within all walks of life there is hurt and harm and there\u2019s care and hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, the response to Poor has been lots of poor people saying, \u2018Oh my God, I feel seen.\u2019 But also there\u2019s been lots of privileged people saying, \u2018How can I help?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hungry, O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s next book \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m not allowed to talk about it,\u201d she says but does anyway \u2013 is out in 2026. \u201cI\u2019m excited for people to read it. It\u2019s a book for every woman. It\u2019s a biography of my body \u2013 the things we do to our bodies to shrink ourselves \u2013 but it\u2019s also about being hungry for achievement and hungry for connection. It\u2019s about how we never feel we fit \u2013 in the clothes or in the f**king room.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Sullivan, who has three children, says writing Hungry has been gruelling but healing. \u201cI\u2019ve never loved my body as much, which is great, and maybe it\u2019s the whole point of all of this, to like myself a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is director of Maynooth University\u2019s new National Centre for Inclusive Higher Education. She was made a professor in December 2024. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to manage it all. These are opportunities I never knew would come into my life. It\u2019s hard to know whether to stay in academia or leave and do other things. The dream, I suppose, would be sitting in Annaghmakerrig, writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

An expensive designer bag sits on a chair in the room at the Gate. O\u2019Sullivan, who is now in demand as a public speaker, bought it after receiving a hefty payment for a speech in the UK. She has plans for a third book, which she says will offer \u201c10 rules to help yourself and help others\u201d.<\/p>\n

But back to the stage adaptation of Poor. Kelly says she wants audiences to come away remembering that \u201ctalent is everywhere, opportunity is not\u201d \u2013 \u201cI am taking your words when I say this, Katriona, but I say it so often now,\u201d she adds. \u201cAnd there are people who will come to see this show who have opportunities for people in their pockets, in their minds, in their businesses, and they need to ask themselves: where can I spread opportunity?<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause one of the tragedies of the story for me is that Katriona O\u2019Sullivan is an anomaly but she shouldn\u2019t be. And that\u2019s on us. So having it here in the Gate is a weird one, but sometimes these tiny little planets align and you go, \u2018There are enough planets here to establish a galaxy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a brilliant, entertaining production,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan says. \u201cI don\u2019t want people to read this article and go, \u2018Oh my God, it sounds so serious.\u2019 This play has got music, it has got hope, it has got laughter and it\u2019s got sadness and it\u2019s got joy. It\u2019s absolutely about my life, but it\u2019s also about life in general \u2013 and the message is triumph. The message is triumph and hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poor opens at the Gate Theatre<\/a>, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival<\/a>, on Thursday, October 2nd, with previews from Friday, September 26th. It runs until Sunday, November 2nd. It is a coproduction with the Belgrade Theatre<\/a>, in Coventry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a high-ceilinged room in the bowels of the Gate, with Samuel Beckett looking on from a portrait…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[43857,18,117,43856,43858,19,17,43854,43855,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-61724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-dublin-theatre-festival","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-gate-theatre","12":"tag-hilda-fay","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-katriona-o-sullivan","16":"tag-sonya-kelly","17":"tag-trinity-college-dublin-tcd"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}