Katriona O’Sullivan and the Legacy of Storm Trees by Sonya Kelly

Sometime in early February of 2024, I took a trip up to the Tyrone Gutherie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in County Monaghan – a magnificent and magical artists’ retreat set in dense forest next to a lake. My mission: Draft 2 of Poor, the stage play, adapted from the bestselling memoir by the unstoppable professor, author and activist Katriona O’Sullivan –

No pressure.

There had been a violent and unforgiving wind storm that winter. Power was out. The taxi ride from Monaghan bus station to Annaghmakerrig was littered with fallen trees. We arrived to the house, where I set down my bag and took out my computer to start Draft 2. The first draft was a crude and rough edit – an embarrassment of “key events” and bare bones sketched and crudely strung together. First drafts are like guilty secrets – you bury them as fast as you can and if you are lucky, no one will ever know they exist. This next draft, however, made me sick with nerves. This would be the one that would be sent to Katriona.

When we’d met in October of the previous year in the Gate offices, I made it clear to her straight away: ‘If you don’t like it, we don’t do it. You press stop. You press go. You’re in charge of everything. This is your life and your story. Your book means an awful lot to an awful lot of people. I have no desire for you to see it on the stage and think, What the fuck is this?’ She must have thought I was mad – a bespeckled playwright in a baseball hat, reassuring her she never has to see the story of her life I had been commissioned to adapt.

I’d been given the book by Thomas Conway, the New Work Manager at the Gate, a month before, and was struck by its beauty, brilliance and the powerful message it delivered: Trauma is not a choice. Addiction is not a choice. Poverty and abuse are not a choices. Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. Everybody matters and as a society, we can do better to hold each other up. The darkness and shadows were real and unsettling, and yet in between the pages, there was light, laughter, love and the absolute craic. I really wanted this job. I really wanted it. To turn my back on an opportunity like Poor would be to render myself complicit with the repressive structures responsible for unequal advantage.

Poor, the play charts the promise that Katriona, made to herself on the opening page – To me, aged seven. I’ve got you. To me, the phrase, I’ve got you means, I will never let you down, even when it’s hard and I don’t know if I can. I’ve got you means I will do what I said I’d do, when I said I’d do it. It is a convent of unconditional constancy. I’ve got you is one of the most powerful single clause sentences written in the English language. It is clear and elegant, simple yet epic, easy to say – not so easy to carry through, and therein lies the triumph of Poor.

While in Annagmakerrig, I sat down at my desk, opened up my computer to start Draft 2 and my phone rang. It was Thomas Conway from the Gate Theatre. ‘Sonya, I know you’re up in Monaghan working on the play, but there’s something quite urgent I need to tell you.’ My heart sank. ‘She’s changed her mind, hasn’t she? That’s okay… I did say that was an option…oh god! Please don’t tell me you sent her the first draft!’ ‘No, no, no, it’s not that. It’s just –‘ The call was cut off by a knock on my door. And the person on the other side? Katriona. She’d come up to work on the second draft of her second book. We fell about laughing.

I completed my second draft of Poor – the draft she would be sent – that week at Annaghmakerrig. I typed like a mad thing, from early morning, and late into the night. I typed like Jessica Fletcher in the opening credits of Murder, She Wrote as Katriona, its protagonist, walked the corridors. I typed the fire in Golden Bridge to the sound of her footsteps on the ceiling above. I typed the Boppy! Boppy! Tea! Tea! scene to the sound of her laughing on the phone to her husband. I typed to the sound of her blow dryer, as she sang Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way at the top of her voice. I typed her family holiday in Maplethorpe as she walked by my door, chatting her way to the kitchen, ‘Oh and Sonya Kelly’s in there. She’s adapting my book.’ In the afternoons I’d take a break and go down to the kitchen where she’d be sitting at the table. ‘Hey Sonya. Where are you up to now?’ So I’d tell her where I was up to, and she’d tell me all about the Blue Lion Pub or Stoneycroft Tower, or Sandra and Keith, or Mrs Arkinson. Then I’d go back to my room and write it all down.

It was cold that February, but Katriona still got in the lake, and I typed to the sound of her squeals bouncing off the broken forest around us. It has been without exception, the most surreal and privileged thing I have ever experienced: Katriona O’Sullivan, alive in all her present tense in one room, and her past, her memories, all her pain and pockets of sunshine coming out of my hands in another.

One day she came in the back door and into the kitchen from a walk, and showed me a photo she’d taken. ‘Two trees fell against each other during the storm. That’s just like me and my husband, Dave – a pair of storm trees holding each other up.’

I thought about the image of those storm trees a lot during the rehearsals for Poor, while I watched Jess, the choreographer work with the cast to build the skills and trust required to hold up the actors who play Katriona, show after show. Their strength and her trust are all she has between herself and the ground. It is no easy feat, to hold another person up, but what this book has taught me is that nothing is impossible. Just ask those storm trees up in Monaghan.

My heartfelt thanks to Katriona O’Sullivan for allowing me to be part on this extraordinary journey, and to Dave, the storm tree who holds her up. It has been the privilege of my career to deliver this play, and to be part of the legacy of this book that has brought so much to so many people. My deepest appreciation also to Michelle King, Thomas Conway, Róisín McBrinn, Colm O’Callaghan, the Gate staff, the entire cast, creative, stage management and technical teams of Poor who worked so tirelessly to bring this magnificent story to their stage. And of course to my own storm tree, my amazing wife Kate Ferris. And to you, thank you for coming to Poor, and for supporting Irish theatre.

Best wishes, Sonya Kelly

This piece is an excerpt from the programme for POOR, available only at the Gate Theatre.