Emily Flynn interviews Irish playwright Sonya Kelly and discusses the process of adapting Katriona O’Sullivan’s story to the stage.
When Sonya Kelly was offered Katriona O’Sullivan’s memoir Poor by Thomas Conway, the manager of new work at the Gate Theatre, she had not read it before, though she had heard of it. As a playwright who is given many books to consider, she recalled that it was rare for a story to make such an impression, she explained that as she was reading, she just knew what she would do with it. From the epigraph, "To me, aged seven, I've got you", she felt an immediate connection. The play then becomes a fulfilment of a promise between the younger and older versions of Katriona on stage.
In conversation with Kelly, it was impossible to miss how deeply she reveres the book. She quotes it, dissects its structure, remembers lines word-for-word. Her choice to give the physical book a place on stage feels like an act of devotion, a reminder that every moment of the play begins and ends with O’Sullivan’s own words. "It's a book that means a lot to so many people," she says.
Adapting the recent memories and lived experience of a living author's memoir for the stage demands a rare balance of honesty and sensitivity. This was an undertaking that Kelly approached with deep care. From the outset, O’Sullivan was involved in every stage of the process. “At one point, I was ringing her six times a day,” Kelly recalled, laughing. “I didn’t want to stray from the author's intent.” She described the collaboration as an ongoing conversation, where every decision was checked and rechecked to ensure the spirit of the original story remained intact. Kelly spoke of never wanting O’Sullivan to feel she had lost control of her own narrative. She reflects that, “The play would not have been possible without Katriona”.
Turning pain into art is a beautiful sentiment, but can sound deceptively simple, as if suffering naturally becomes beautiful through art and storytelling. I asked Kelly what this looked like for her in practice in adapting the story. “When you know something is good, it always takes a chunk out of you,” she says. However, she explains that discomfort does not always have to be a negative thing. Theatre allows people to come together in a shared human experience; the stage holds a mirror to personal and societal truths. Unlike writing, she notes, theatre places these moments directly in front of the audience: the emotion is performed, physical, immediate. “It looks the same, but it’s different - it’s like tennis and badminton," she explains, highlighting how staging sensitive material requires a different rhythm and awareness. Theatre has a rare power to contain vulnerability, transforming private emotion into something collectively understood. I asked Kelly if she believes that theatre has the capacity to hold pain in that sense. “Yes, when it’s done well, and when great care is taken to look after everybody.” Kelly also takes a pragmatic approach to presence in her projects: “When you’re in it, you’re in it; when it’s finished, it’s finished.”
Fresh from its acclaimed Dublin run, in the Gate Theatre, “POOR” heads next to the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Having already moved Irish audiences with Katriona O’Sullivan’s extraordinary story, I asked Kelly whether she writes with home audiences in mind, and how she anticipates the play will land with English audiences across the water. Kelly explains that the audience isn’t a passive observer but “almost another cast member,” whose presence and reactions subtly shape the performance of each show. She says that she will be very interested to see how the play is received by English audiences. As different cultural frameworks are in play, it’s difficult to predict how certain aspects will land. Still, she notes that cities like Coventry, with their strong Irish contingent, will likely respond to the story’s rhythm and nuance, even though a few colloquialisms and references might need to be clarified.
At the end of the memoir, Katriona O’Sullivan speaks very transparently about how she does not want her story to be interpreted as a triumphant “rags-to-riches” story. O’Sullivan expresses her disinterest in being a poster child and goes on to explain that the societal structures in place that prevent people from her background from pursuing education are still in place today. I asked Kelly how she was able to communicate this anti-meritocratic message on stage without the direct address possible in a memoir. She stressed that the story’s relevance lies in its universality: there are “a thousand Katrionas,” she said, each navigating systems that decide which people are given opportunities and which are not.
Rather than simplifying Katriona’s experience into a story of personal success, Kelly focused on letting audiences witness the structures and choices shaping her life. Careful attention to tone, pacing, and focus ensures the play emphasizes context over heroism, showing how societal forces intersect with individual experience. Her hope is that audiences leave with “fresh eyes” on their own lives and opportunity, as well as leaving audiences attuned to the systems that create or withhold opportunity. Through this approach, Kelly transforms raw experience into theatre without overt sentimentality, turning O’Sullivan’s real lived experience and pain into art while refusing to reduce hardship to a feel-good moral.
In adapting Poor, Sonya Kelly demonstrates that theatre can transform personal pain into a shared, meaningful experience. By staging vulnerability with care and grounding emotion in lived reality, the play resists sentimentality, fosters empathy, and turns private struggles into art that resonates, leaving the audience changed long after the final curtain.