life before you - uk tour 2026

I cAN’T care for you when you're like this – can't love you when you're like this – You need to be – you need to be better.

Gráinne leaves Ardoyne, Belfast, for England, chasing the promise of a better life for her daughter. She scrubs, she bleaches, she sacrifices and piece by piece, she begins to disappear.

Eimear grows up surrounded by privilege, stepping through doors her mother could never open. But with every step forward, she drifts further away into another class, another name, another life.

As they clash over diverging ideas of womanhood, what surfaces is complex and turbulent, straining their relationships with themselves and with each other to breaking point.

Life Before You, a fierce and unflinching new play by Eva Hudson, lays bare the fault lines between mothers and daughters. Addressing women's healthcare, class, survival, and the erasure of aging women, it asks: what do we pass on, and how do we escape the lives written for us?

Published by bloomsbury methuen drama: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/life-before-you-9781350634275/

CREATIVE TEAM

Writer  Eva Hudson / Director & Producer Roisin McCay-Hines⁠ / Designers  Jasmine Thompson⁠ & Abigail Manard / Technical Stage Manager & Sound/LX Designer  Louis Gulliver King / Assistant Director Izzy Ponsford / Producer Mentor Emma Gibson / Dramaturgy Mentor Sarah Dickenson / Production Photographer & Videographer Edward J Felton / Rehearsal Photographer & Videographer Zoë Birkbeck

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CAST

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Grainne Hayley-Marie Axe

Eimear Georgia Alexandra 

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TOUR VENUES

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Theatre Royal Bath, Exeter Northcott & Barnfield Theatres, Sterts Arts Centre, The Poly, The Acorn, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Mercury Theatre Colchester, The Corn Hall Diss, Tobacco Factory Theatres.

★★★★★

"A Powerful Play"

Diss Express

★★★★

"A thoughtful and emotionally intelligent portrait of mothers, daughters and the distances between them"

A Youngish Perspective

★★★★

"Tender and Deeply Human"

Stagetalk Magazine

★★★★

"Beautifully written and wonderfully portrayed"

Lifestyle District

★★★★

"Intense, Bold and Relatable"

Pink Prince Theatre

855-FOR-TRUTH

by Eva Hudson 

ThE HOPE THEATRE, LONDON, 11-22 FEBRUARY 2025

THE BRIDGE THEATRE, BRUSSELS - 2-14 JUNE 2025

'Incredible scriptwriting [...] a deeply mesmerising watch. Hudson's script had me doubting everything I thought I knew [...] a wonderful new play that deserves a lot of love' - ★★★★★ 5 star review, Broadway World    

855-FOR-TRUTH examines the similarities between religious doomsday narratives and End Times climate change rhetoric, and where love and fear, action and inaction can be discerned. A story of connection, shared humanity and the desire - or inability- to fix or save our world and each other, it questions where even the most polarising views become similar, and what can be seen through colliding science and religion with love.

a tender exploration of what it means to believe anything at all - the brussels times

I KNEW HER BEFORE SHE WAS A VIRGIN

Short Film in post-production. Screened at nine film festivals, including British Independent Film Award qualifying Beston Film Festival, and picked up the award for Best Debut Filmmaker at Titan Film Festival, Sydney and Best Drama Short at Hollywood Just4Shorts. Finalist at Europa Film Festival.

THE LOCK In

Short film written by Chloe Palmer, directed by Eva Hudson. Produced by Bart Stanislawek, BAFTA winning producer.