Lucy O’Brien’s third play, Katydid, exposes the reality of living with someone with a disability, and deviates from the corny and simplistic formula of films like I Am Sam and The Other Sister.

PLAYWRIGHT Lucy O’Brien’s 28 year old sister Sophie has the mind of a new born.
Sophie responds to her sister and parents as a baby would, turning her head toward the sound of their voices, making a noise, and smiling.
“But she never cries,” says O’Brien.
Sophie had an allergic reaction when she was immunised as a baby “from the usual childhood diseases,” says O’Brien. “They could not isolate the cause. This stopped her brain progress from three months.”
Growing up in Wellington with a mentally and physically disabled sibling involved a “certain element of shame”, which was followed by a “hero period,” says O’Brien.
“ If anyone called my sister a retard, which was frequently, I would get really really defensive. ‘How dare you’ [I’d say] and always defend her honour.”
The family was constantly in and out of hospital, and O’Brien’s parents’ life was unrelentingly busy. The effect was a feeling of neglect.
“I remember wanting a lot of my parent’s attention but then all children want to be the centre of attention...”
The loud child soon developed into a naughty teenager.
“I went through a phase of acting up – being bratty as all kids do – and I became very extroverted.”
It is fitting O’Brien chose a career in theatre.
O’Brien wrote Katydid while doing her MA in Scriptwriting at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters. The play is her third, following Postal – a black comedy about middle aged postal workers trying to find the meaning of life – and a Fringe Festival show which was performed in a truck on the side of the road.
O’Brien says most of the films and plays about living with someone with an intellectual or physical disability are too simplistic and corny, including her The Other Sister, about a mentally disabled couple in love, and I Am Sam, about a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his daughter.
“That’s all well and good and builds a certain amount of awareness, but I wanted something that reflected the family. I wanted to see every part of living with someone – the dark and the light. People with disabilities aren’t always angelic and misunderstood.”
Enter Kate Harris, the 19 year old character in Katydid who has cerebral palsy and is described as the “sometimes manipulative... bright young woman with an absurd wit and a devilish love of trouble”.
The character is as similar to O’Brien’s sister as she is different.
“Kate’s body is very stiff which affects her speech.  She can’t walk without assistance and it is a struggle to talk and communicate. My sister can’t walk and her muscles are locked up.” And both are in wheelchairs.
But that’s where the similarities end.
“My sister is taken out and celebrated by people at the Argo Trust, but in the play Kate is very much on her own and kept a child by her father.”
The Argo Trust is a residential home for adults with profound intellectual and physical disabilities.
“During the 1980s there wasn’t a huge amount of options for kids like my sister to hang out. So my parents looked after her for most of their lives. But for the past five or six years she has been going to the Trust.”
O’Brien adds: “My sister is a lovely person. I want to stress this (Katydid) is not about my family.  I don’t want my parents to think it is based on them. There is some pretty shocking stuff.”
The young playwright is reluctant to elaborate on the shock factor but says a couple of nude scenes are likely to evoke a response.
The above photo gives the reader an idea of what to expect.
“The bath is a strong image - people are vulnerable in the bath,” says O’Brien explaining the significance.
And the name Katydid?
“Because the way Kate moves her arms are like stiff little wings… like an insect.”
Katydid, Bats Theatre, 7.30pm, August 18-28.