Sandra Lee Hughes

Sandra Hughes ins a professional theatre director, performer, playwright, and choreographer. She was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1974, Ms. Hughes co-founded and became artistic director of the Great American Mime Experiment – known since 1991 as Gateway Performance Productions. She has created over 23 original productions for the company for live stage and television. These include mime dramas, innovative works combining mask theatre, mime, dance, and original music as well ask mask plays inspired by the Irish Mummer and Native American traditions. Subjects include father/daughter incest (In Search of Eros), the rigors of climbing the corporate ladder (The Loss of Iris), the nature of healing in collaboration with and at the request of Native American healer Two Trees (The Image Makers), the dynamics of dictatorship (Kirkos), and a tribute to the life and art of Mexican visual artist Frida Kahlo (Bring Me Yellow Flowers).

Ms. Hughes’ productions have toured to theatres, festivals, museums, art centers and other community sites in 35 states in the United States and to Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany Slovenia, Hungary, Northern Ireland, Canada, and Mexico, and have received broadcast on National Public Television. Highlights include performances for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Meet the Artist Series and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NYC) as well as collaborative performances with mime ensembles with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Akron Symphony. Her video adaptation of her stage production, Bring Me Yellow Flowers, showcased at the American Film Institute Video Festival in Los Angeles where it was nominated for the Robert Bennett Award. Television awards include a regional EMMY for “Outstanding Entertainment Program of the Year” and a CINDY award for excellence in children’s programming.

Her work A Mummers Tale of the Seasons, inspired by an ancient tale of two Irish who vie for sovereignty of the land and the seasons, premiered in Belfast, Ireland in July 2001 as part of a Peace Process Project at the McCracken School for Irish Language and Culture. Ms. Hughes has dedicated a significant portion of her career to arts in education. She has served on the theatre faculties at Lake Erie College, the University of Akron, and Antioch College. She also created performance and designed residency programs for educational venues throughout the United States and performed and taught in Department of Defense, American, British, English-Speaking and International Schools in Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Spain. In October 2000, Ms. Hughes co-founded the MASK Center, a unique arts facility dedicated to the arts of mask performing.

Ms. Hughes has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgia Council for the Arts, and on the Executive Boards of the Atlanta Theatre Coalition, the Santa Fe Theatre Association, and the Atlanta New Play Project. She has been a contributing writer on the performing arts for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Atlanta Journal, and the Atlantic Celtic Quarterly. She is currently writing a book about her experiences as a mask performer entitled, The Mask as a Messenger. She is a member of the Southeast Playwrights Project, the Atlanta Coalition of Performing Arts and Alternate ROOTS. Her company receives funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta, the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and the DeKalb Arts Council.

Work with Indigenous Cultures

Gateway Performance Productions was founded in 1975 by Sandra Hughes and Michael Hickey. Since that time the company has created and produced a substantial body of new work for the theatre and toured thirty-three states in the United States and in nine foreign countries. Based in Atlanta, GA since 1978, Gateway presents public performances and educational programs throughout the 15 county greater Atlanta area.

The company’s most popular and powerful productions are the mime and mask dramas created by artistic director Sandra Hughes, which feature masks made by nationally acclaimed mask maker Michael Hickey. Hughes and Hickey both studied on scholarship with world-famous mime artist Marcel Marceau at his Advanced Mime Seminars in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Gateway has participated in outreach programs to under served communities since 1975. The company has presented outreach programs in the state of New Mexico and in mining towns in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Outreach has included inner-city schools, libraries, and community centers in New Orleans, New York, Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Richmond, Atlanta, and Cleveland. Projects have included the Isleta Indian Reservation in New Mexico, the Heart of Georgia Project, the Fulton County Summer Arts Program, and US Department of Housing and Urban Development performances and workshops.