Steven Cole Hughes is a playwright, actor, director and is currently Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Director of Theatre at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, CO. He has also taught playwriting at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Education Department. Full-length plays include Indiana, Behold! The Fig Leaf Apron, A Good Indian,The Bad Man, Billy Hell (’08 Ovation Award for Best New Work), Slabtown, cowboyily, Arabia, Battleground State, Dogs by Seven and Poor Devils.
His plays for young audiences are The Presidents!,The Wright Stuff, and The Geography of Adventure. Productions and commissions have come from Bloomington Playwrights Project, The Coterie Theatre, Creede Repertory Theatre, Curious Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, the National Theatre Conservatory and the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. He was the co-artistic director of Fight or Flight, a New York City-based theatre company for whom he has adapted and directed Shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry V, and Melville’s Moby Dick. He won the 2011 Denver Post Ovation Award for Special Achievement for his trilogy of plays The Billy Trilogy. He was once interviewed by local publication 5280 Magazine.
Hughes has a BA in Theatre from Indiana University and an MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory.
Mentor Statement
There are few things I enjoy more than talking about New Plays. Preferably at a bar, but this format works, too.
