What do you do when staying present seems impossible?SAVING MYSELF is a powerful new solo play exploring trauma, mythology, and survival by debut playwright Tim Stubbs Hughes.Set over one night, we follow Lilly, a young woman alone in her flat, surrounded by books, half-remembered rituals, and an unlit candle. Since childhood, Lilly has been blamed for things going wrong: pets that disappeared, toys that broke, the uneasy silences that followed her through her family home. Over time, these stories became fact, shaping how others treated her and how she learned to understand herself.After a violent assault, Lilly reaches breaking point. With no one left to turn to, she fixates on the idea that something inside her - a demon, an inheritance, or the damage left by trauma - has to be destroyed. Moving between realism, poetry, folklore, and ritual, the play unfolds in real time as Lilly fights to take control of her own body and story. Raw, darkly comic, and unsettling, SAVING MYSELF asks what happens when care is replaced by superstition, and what it costs a woman to save herself.Produced by 20 South Street in association with Grey Swan, directed by Julia Stubbs and performed by Jessam
