Katy Sullivan Hopes Making History on Broadway Heralds a Revolution
A young girl recently stopped the actor and Paralympian Katy Sullivan after a performance of Cost of Living on Broadway, in which Sullivan plays a quadriplegic woman named Ani negotiating her new life after an accident and a complicated relationship with ex-husband Eddie (David Zayas).
“She asked to take my picture and said, ‘I want to thank you. I’ve never seen someone like me on stage. I love acting,’” recalled Sullivan, talking to The Daily Beast in a recent Zoom call. “And I said to her, ‘Don’t give up, don’t walk away from it.’ We’re at a tipping point where people want to see authentic stories of people with disabilities—the real thing. They don’t want to see able-bodied people sitting in a wheelchair.”
Sullivan, who was born and raised in Alabama, is making history this season as the first female amputee to ever appear on Broadway. She has been playing Ani for around six years in productions of Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, first at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2016, then off-Broadway, then at London’s Hampstead Theatre, and now, in the Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway production (at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, to Oct. 30).