Life Before You | Alma Theatre
DIRECTOR & PRODUCER
Supported by Shakespeare at Tobacco Factory Bursary Award
At eighteen, Eimear has the world at her feet. A place at Oxford, friends with great hair and ambition and a trip to Costa Rica by private jet to ‘save the environment’. If only her Mum would see her for what she will become, and if only she would call her Emma.
At eighteen, Grainne was scrubbing butcher’s trays every night after school to save up for a flight to England. She wanted to be able to give her unborn daughter more, to break out of the reality of a brutal upbringing in rural Ireland. If only Eimear would understand the sacrifices she made; if only she would for once say thank you.
Life Before You explores the limits of caring and what it means to love unconditionally. Can a mother’s love transcend rigid class systems, or will the different life expectations of the two women push one of them to the brink of no return?
Cast Rose Adams, Georgia Cudby, Nuhazhet Diaz Cano
Writer Eva Hudson
Director & Producer Roisin McCay-Hines
Designers Jasmine Thompson & Abigail Manard
Technical Stage Manager Lydia Morgan
Photographer Craig Fuller
'Directed adroitly by Roisin McCay-Hines
The energy that drives the writing may well come from feminist anger, but the narrative is laced with tenderness and humour
Women who refuse to be defined entirely by their familial relationships make for good drama, and the idea that they might have to disappear entirely in order to discover themselves is reminiscent of Shirley Valentine, or even A Doll’s House'
- StageTalk Magazine