Gwenda Hughes

Gwenda Hughes

Director

For the New Vic: Bell, Book and Candle, Talking Heads, Spring and Port Wine, Proof, Alphabetical Order, A Taste of Honey, Flamingoland, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Stags and Hens, Smoke, A Christmas Carol, East Lynne, Dancing at Lughnasa, Pinocchio, Once We Were Mothers, A Woman of No Importance, Four Nights in Knaresborough, Kes, Hector’s House, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Romeo and Juliet, By Jeeves, Toad of Toad Hall, Big Maggie, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Moll Flanders, The Wizard of Oz, Office Suite, Broken Glass, She Knows You Know!, Othello, A Passionate Woman and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Other theatre credits include: As Associate Director of Birmingham Rep, over 25 productions including, Whispers of Angels, The Winslow Boy, Loot, Once on This Island (Olivier Award for Best Musical); over 50 productions for children including, as Artistic Director of Watford Palace TIE, Taking Liberties, Dirty Rascals, Worlds Apart and Past Caring with adults and children with learning difficulties and, at Theatre Centre, Billy the Kid, Inside Out, 1983, Face Values and Sack of Lies.

Gwenda was Artistic Director of the New Vic Theatre from 1998 until 2006. Since stepping down from her role, she has been working as a freelance director for, among others, Oldham Coliseum, the Dukes Playhouse, Lancaster, Women and Theatre, Language Alive, the New Vic, LAMDA and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Her most recent productions have included The Rotters Club and To Sir With Love, both for Birmingham Rep.

She has created and taught modules on Directing and the Creative Industries for the University of Birmingham and has written a handbook for directors called Clocking on at the Play Factory and a play, Refugees.

She was a council member of Arts Council, West Midlands for some years and is, at present, part of the directing team for BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.