Making art in times of crisis by Eva Hudson


4/2/2025

Eva Hudson is writer of 855-FOR-TRUTH, an end of the world love story. Having electrified audiences at Pleasance Theatre and Bristol Old Vic in 2024, 855-FOR-TRUTH is coming to The Hope Theatre 11 – 22 February 2025.

Image: Eva Hudson (Stuart Bywater photography)


In August of 2022, the summer I graduated from my undergrad, I found myself travelling between states in the US, my face pressed up against the glass of a FlixBus, watching billboards flick by as our coach with more passengers than seats made its way down the highway. The bus driver had just told us over the intercom that, ‘Not gonna lie to y’all’, he had been ‘drivin’ for seventeen hours’. The lady on the seat next to me was 21, the same age as me, and had told me (all in one breath) that she was an Empath, a Palm Reader, and on her way to New York to meet her third husband. But what really jolted me was a huge billboard that came into view, with thick red lettering, casually reading, ‘BURN IN HELL OR CALL 855-FOR-TRUTH’.


Four hours into my journey, the shape of the billboard still rattling around my brain, I called the number—because of course—and was connected to a Mennonite preacher, Dale. He warned me that the world was ending and were I not to join his ‘community’, I would burn in Hell. We spoke about everything from a woman’s place (childbearing), climate change (not real, trust God), and what family meant to us. We agreed on nothing. 


Calling Dale became my party trick for the rest of the summer, as my friends drunkenly listened to him prophesise the End of the World in a Big Blaze of Fire. I had quite condescendingly shrugged Dale’s warnings off. He was a part of a ‘community’ whose values did not align with mine; there was no logic to his arguments. I found it funny. But I felt very disconcerted realising that his ‘prophecy’ was uncomfortably close to the reality of the crisis my generation have inherited.


 Before getting ready to leave to begin my drama school MA, I read an article in The Guardian that told me the World Would End in a Blaze of Fire. It could have been written by Dale, but it was written by a leading climate scientist. As a young girl, and then woman, I have always felt and thought very deeply, and often felt dismissed for my age. I absorbed the news obsessively as a younger girl and had opinions, fears and feelings I didn’t feel there was room to express as an eleven-year-old. I found space to channel this onstage, and in my writing. But, during the pandemic, I started to find the news too much to bear, and limited myself to watching or reading it only at certain times. But I couldn’t stop thinking of this image both Dale and the climate scientist had conjured. It made me anxious, of course; it made me feel as a 21-year-old that the world I had been prepared for at school was not the one that met me when I left; it made me feel such admiration for the brave young people who risk so much in speaking loudly about climate change and other injustices.


I finished the first draft of my play, 855-FOR-TRUTH, in 2023. It follows an 18-year-old girl, Meredith, who has been raised in a Christian cult, and an 18-year-old boy, Isaac, who is a radical and obsessive young climate scientist. It’s a story about unlikely love; about connection, and about community. Listening to people who are different from you. Listening to the young. It’s been through four drafts, and much refining – I have worked closely with largely the same team of friends I made in the year that followed at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. It gives voice to the generation who are having to deal with the ‘blaze of fire’ both Dale and the scientist told of. Rewriting can be difficult; for its upcoming run at The Hope, I was struggling to find a way back ‘in’.

Revisiting the same Word Doc this November, I felt the sad pang of a new fire blaze under my writing. The US I had travelled through in 2022 – though eccentric - felt a world away.


 In rereading, I found myself realising that both Isaac and Meredith have inherited belief systems from two Old Men, stood on plinths, who gatekeep knowledge; who shout loudly about things that don’t concern them; whose knowledge systems are patriarchal and do not invite the opinions of young people. This cracked the play back open for me; I started writing with greater intensity and purpose. I felt that the world needed to hear from young people about an issue that will affect our lives more than any other generation. The arts- whilst grossly underfunded- have for so long been a touchpoint for society in times of crisis. I saw my American friends sharing this November poems by Mary Oliver, Cameron Awkward-Rich and a passage from Toni Morrison which I find to be a comforting manifesto: 


This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.


I have found so much comfort in community and in creating something together with other young artists that gives voice back to young people – and young women – when it seems the world is shifting further away from listening to us. It’s not enough, of course, but it’s something, and I hope audiences feel inspired to listen more, judge less, and choose to love as an act of rebellion against the chaos the world we’ve inherited is in.


What else can we do?


855-FOR-TRUTH

The Hope Theatre, Islington

11 - 22 February 2025

Box Office


'I don't want it to be true. But look at the weather... It was torrents yesterday and now it's too hot to think'

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Somewhere in the woods between Hilldale, Utah, and The End of The World, an 18 year old religious cult member and young climate scientist collide. Meredith, raised in a Christian cult, believes the world will end in six days. Isaac, an outsider environmentalist, is racing against time to figure out The Project.


In this new play, the boundaries between faith, science, and survival blur on the edge of a forest and a highway. A story of shared humanity and our frustrated desire to fix our world and each other, 855-FOR-TRUTH questions where even the most polarising views become similar, and what can be seen through connection.

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