Hugh Hodgart

Hugh has been an active member of the Scottish theatre community since the mid 1970s. He graduated from Stirling University with a BA Hons (English). His earliest professional theatre work was in a wide range of technical and production roles although, it was his ambition to become a theatre director. On joining TAG Theatre Company at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in 1979 he began the transition from technician/stage manager to director. On leaving TAG (as Associate Director) he spent nine years from 1984 to 1993 as Associate Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh and a further three years freelance before joining the then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now RCS) as Head of Acting in 1996.

In his freelance career Hugh taught and directed productions for RSAMD, Scottish Youth Theatre, Dundee Rep, Wildcat Productions and returned to the Royal Lyceum for three further productions after he left his full time post.

Hugh has has directed an enormous variety of material from Greek tragedy to new writing including Chekhov, Shakespeare, Jonson, Coward, Moliere, Shaw, Wilde, Pinter, Howard Barker, and amongst other contemporary playwrights Stuart Paterson (author of plays, screenplays and adaptations as well as a highly respected series of plays for children). Hugh has directed around a dozen of Howard Barker’s plays; all for the RSAMD/RCS, his first being Victory, as a guest director in the mid-eighties. In 2004 his student production of The Bite of the Night was hailed by The Sunday Herald to be one of the ten best theatre productions of the year in Scotland.

He has also lectured and conducted workshops in France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, the USA and the former USSR. Workshops in the USA were at Interlochen Arts Academy where he was a guest artist on two occasions. In Poland he taught at the Warsaw Academy, in Italy at the Paolo Grassi school in Milan, and in Germany on the directing programme of the Ernst Busch school in Berlin.

As Director of the School of Drama, Dance, Production and Screen Hugh is a member of the RCS Senior Management Team and responsible for academic, artistic and operational leadership of the School.

He is currently External Examiner for the BA Acting at Guildford School of Acting and has previously fulfilled the same role for Birmingham School of Acting, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and East 15 MA Acting. He has also participated in a number of academic validation and review events for institutions in Scotland, England, Wales and Singapore

He is a member of the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee and has in the past served as elected staff governor on the Board of RCS, chair of the artistic committee of the Board of Scottish Youth Theatre and chaired the Board of Suspect Culture Theatre Company.