As writer,  director, choreographer and performer Sandra Hughes creates original productions with drama, dance, mime, music and masks that have toured to 33 states in the U.S. and 13 other countries. She recently choreographed, directed and performed in Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale and Kabalevsky’s The Comedians conducted by Artistic Director Christopher Rex for the  Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida. She's also choreographed Mathias Bamert’s “Once Upon an Orchestra” for performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Akron Symphony. Sandra is the Artistic Director of Gateway Performance Productions.

Sandra's  plays have been performed in Denmark  Northern Ireland and Scotland and throughout the United States.  “A Mummers Tale of the Seasons”, inspired by traditional Irish folk theatre and Irish mythology, was recently performed at the Aero International Mask Festival in Denmark. An excerpt of the performance of the play with an interview with Sandra aired nationally on Canadian television.

Other awards and career achievements include  “Bring Me Yellow Flowers” at the American Film
Institute Video Festival in Los Angeles with nomination for the Robert Bennett Award, a regional EMMY for “Outstanding Ent

As writer,  director, choreographer and performer Sandra Hughes creates original productions with drama, dance, mime, music and masks that have toured to 33 states in the U.S. and 13 other countries. She recently choreographed, directed and performed in Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale and Kabalevsky’s The Comedians conducted by Artistic Director Christopher Rex for the  Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida. She's also choreographed Mathias Bamert’s “Once Upon an Orchestra” for performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Akron Symphony. Sandra is the Artistic Director of Gateway Performance Productions.

Sandra's  plays have been performed in Denmark  Northern Ireland and Scotland and throughout the United States.  “A Mummers Tale of the Seasons”, inspired by traditional Irish folk theatre and Irish mythology, was recently performed at the Aero International Mask Festival in Denmark. An excerpt of the performance of the play with an interview with Sandra aired nationally on Canadian television.

Other awards and career achievements include  “Bring Me Yellow Flowers” at the American Film ertainment Program of Year” with national distribution for Public Television and a first place award from the Border Book Playwrighting Contest for “Frida – Diego and Me” with a full production at the DesertFest Play Festival.  Her nomination from the Georgia Council for the Arts to the Southern Arts Federation for literary and theatre arts resulted in her inclusion in Southern Artistry - a site that provides profiles about "acclaimed Southern artists".  View Sandra's profile.

Sandra has  received grant support for her radio plays from the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta with broadcast on WABE Public Radio in Atlanta and KSFR Fine Arts Radio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has also received  multiple grant awards  from the Ford Foundation and Alternate ROOTS for  professional development. A performance of an excerpt from Sandra’s current play-in-progress, “Simple Gifts”, about Catherine Evans Whitener’s contribution at age 15 to the birth of the worldwide textile industry in Dalton, Georgia was made possible through a partnership between the City of Dalton and Brookwood School.

Sandra is currently a Residency, Teaching and Performing Artist for Young Audiences Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta and a Artist in Residence and Touring Artist for the Georgia Council for the Arts. She's taught for the theatre departments at Lake Erie College, Antioch College and the University of Akron. The Sandra L. Hughes Theatre Collection at the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University documents Sandra’s professional theatre career and her contribution to emergence of the art of mime as a theatre form in the U. S.

Sandra has dedicated a substantial part of her career to the support of the creation of new plays for the theatre beyond her own work. In area of leadership she served on the board of directors of The Atlanta New Play Project and The Southeast Playwright’s Project. She was a founding playwright member of SEPP, a member of the Santa Fe Playwrights Lab – a project of the Santa Fe Theatre Company and co-founder of The Writer’s Gym inspired by the playwrighting techniques developed and taught by Maria Irene Fornes. Sandra has also directed new plays produced by Gateway Performance Productions written by Gary Carden, William A. Sessions and Julie Kearns. She currently offers playwrighting workshops for adults and youth. 
Sandra writes for the stage, television, radio, print and online media. Her articles have been published by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Atlanta Celtic Quarterly and the ezine Mythic Passages. She won 1st place in the 2007 Earth Vision’s Nature writing contest for her article about the current global plight of the honeybee – “Moved by the Bees”.

Sandra's training and background include playwrighting with Mark Medoff, August Wilson and Maria Irene Fornes, mime with Marcel Marceau and Juki Arkin, Japanese Noh Theatre with Richard Emmert and Akira Matsui, dance with Valentina Litvinoff of Isadora Duncan’s Russian school, voice with Arthur Lessac, Spolin Improvisation with William Green from the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, acting at Stella Adler Acting Studio in NYC, an acting and directing apprenticeship at the Cleveland Play House in Ohio, theatre studies at Ohio University and journalism with Jerome Schmeltzer.