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Dr Erika Hughes is a director, dramaturg, and performance studies scholar. She is Reader in Performance at the University of Portsmouth, UK, where she also leads Performance area in the School of Art, Design and Performance. Her work as a director and deviser of performance has been seen in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Israel, Canada, Austria, and Pakistan. Most recently she has directed The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman, the digital performance of which is currently touring museums and universities in the UK, Germany, Canada, Austria, and the USA.
Dr. Hughes is the author of Holocaust Memory and Youth Performance, forthcoming in 2023 from Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama. Youth-focused plays about the Holocaust have been in the repertories of top professional companies in Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, Poland, Canada, the United States, and Australia for decades and continue to be performed in theatres, schools, and community centers. Through an examination of select plays, musicals, performances, scripts, performative museum installations, and pedagogically-focused works of applied theatre for young audiences that tell the stories of young people who experienced the Holocaust, Holocaust Memory and Youth Performance examines the ways in which these works make a vital contribution to intergenerational witnessing and collective memory. Dr. Hughes has led workshops and conference sessions on wellness and mindfulness for theatre practitioners, including at the conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE), and the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA). She is the conference planner for the ATHE Focus Group on Wellness, Community, and Aging, and recently co-edited a special issue of Youth Theatre Journal on the community healing and wellness potential of intergenerational collaboration in performance. Since 2013, Dr. Hughes has led The Veterans Project, an international performance-oral history research initiative that uses performance to foster dialogue among military veterans and the civilian communities in which they live. Prior to joining UP she was Assistant Professor of Theatre for Youth and Communities at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, USA, where she was also affiliate faculty in Jewish Studies, German, the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and the Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement. Dr. Hughes earned her PhD in Theatre and Drama from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Technische Universität Berlin, and the Universität Bonn. Her articles and reviews have been published in Theatre Topics, Research in Drama Education, the Journal of European Studies, Performance Research, Youth Theatre Journal, the Brecht Yearbook, and Theatre Journal, as well as a number of edited volumes. She has delivered keynote addresses and presented her research in forums around the world. |
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