Interview: COST OF LIVING's Katy Sullivan Discusses Disability Inclusion and Representation on Broadway

Katy Sullivan is a Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Lucille Lortel Award nominated actor, and a 4-time U.S. Paralympian champion. A double below the knee bilateral amputee, she is now making history as the first female amputee to star in a Broadway show. Sullivan originated the role of Ani in Martyna Majok's Pulitzer Prize-winning Cost of Living, at the Williamstown Theatre Festival as well as in Los Angeles, London, and Off-Broadway, and is making her Broadway debut with the role.

This award-winning play about caring and being cared for, and the ways in which we need one another, officially opens at the the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Monday, October 3, 2022. Directed by Obie Award winner Jo Bonney, Cost of Living also features original star Gregg Mozgala, alongside Kara Young and David Zayas.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Katy Sullivan about making her Broadway debut, representation and disability inclusion in the industry, creating an "athlete character" to train for the Paralympics, and more.

You have been with this show and this role since 2016 when it was presented at Williamstown Theatre Festival, how does it feel to be making your Broadway debut with Cost of Living?

Having spent so much time with this show has just been such an incredible experience and process, learning the evolution of the character. Originating a role and taking it to Broadway is a dream come true. That's pinch me stuff. It's been a really cool, longer road than we thought because of Covid, but an amazing experience.

Can you tell me what Cost of Living is about? What can audiences expect to see?

Yes! Cost of Living follows the story of a caregiver and someone who needs care, and [another] caregiver and someone who needs care, and the stories, you don't realize how they're related until the very end. And it really is just a play about basic needs, not only just from the perspective of the characters with disabilities, but the able-bodied characters in the play. It really explores our collective humanity, and the fact that everybody needs care in a different way, at different times, from different people.

You are making history as the first female amputee to star in a Broadway show. How does it feel to be the person marking this milestone in theatre history?

I honestly didn't realize, I think I was just so focused on the show and my job, and someone mentioned it to me, and I was just like, "Is that true? Is that real?" I am in two minds about it, I'm like, "Well, it's 2022 and this has not happened, we're moving at a glacial pace," but, at the same time, I think we are at a ticking point where people across the board want to see authentic portrayals of characters. I think if you look at any marginalized group in the entertainment industry, at some point they kind of say, "Can we please tell our own stories?" So, I feel like it's an exciting thing to be doing, but at the same time, it's about time!

How do you hope that Cost of Living influences or changes the industry in terms of representation and disability inclusion?

There's a couple of things. I hope that collectively, casting directors, directors, artistic directors, across the board realize that there are talented performers with disabilities out there dying to work. It's not just me and Gregg, there are so many people that I know that have trained, and they're talented, and they're ready to take on any challenge.

But I also think taking a bit of the stigma away is what I'm hoping for, and the play itself is beautifully written in a way that a wheelchair rolls on stage, and it's a woman in a chair without both of her legs. Now, culturally, we're sort of taught to look away, we're told not to stare at somebody, but you're onstage, so the job of the audience is to look straight at you, and there's this feeling in the theater of like, "Are we uncomfortable?" a bit of, "Oh, are we supposed to..." And Martyna, brilliantly, has written both characters that use wheelchairs, the first things out of our mouths are jokes. And it breaks the ice in this beautiful way, and it releases that tension so that we can go, "Oh, okay, she's just a person. Right. Moving on." It kind of takes that stigma away from it being hard to look at.

What do you hope that Broadway audiences take away from Cost of Living?

I ultimately hope that they see themselves reflected in this play somewhere. I think this play has themes of loss, of isolation, of loneliness. There's a lot of humor and a lot of joy in this play as well, but sort of the undercurrent of all of this is... it's really interesting to do this play after globally what we've gone through in the last two years. That feeling of isolation and loneliness, and those kinds of themes, I think they speak to people in a different way. It seems to be a slightly more profound way that people are taking this show. So, what I really hope is that people just see humanity reflected back to them, and the humanity of the characters, and not the physical aspects of who we are.

You are also a 4-time U.S. Paralympian champion. It isn't often that Olympians make the jump to being a Broadway star, but you have done that and more. What has that been like for you, crossing over from professional athlete to professional artist?

It was sort of the reverse! The athlete piece was kind of sandwiched in between. I went to my first audition when I was 12, so it's all I've ever wanted to do my entire life, and I was 25 when I was given a pair of running blades to try, and I'd never run before in my life. So, that opened the door to this experience and this opportunity that totally feels like a random piece of my life! I would never in a million years say, "Oh, I'm clearly going to be a paralympic athlete someday." No, not at all. I actually used some acting to get to a place where... I had a hard time calling myself an athlete for a long time because that was not sort of in my DNA growing up. So, I started looking at it like I would a character, I created an athlete character. Like, "I think an athlete would wake up at 4 am to go to the gym," and "I think an athlete would eat this apple instead of these chips."

It was totally a fake-it-till-you-make-it kind of thing, because Track was so intimidating to me, it was so far outside of my comfort zone. But if you look at the comparison between... they're both performances, they're both physical, using every ounce of your body, and there's costumes, and lights, and a set, and all of those things. So, if you kind of look at any sporting event, you can sort of point to all the pieces of theater in there as well!

Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share about starring in Cost of Living on Broadway?

It's humbling, and exciting, and the audiences have been really wonderful, and it's a dream come true. So, I'm excited for the whole experience, I'm just trying to stay present and take it all in.