The Hughie Project

UPDATE! - It's 2019 and Hughie is coming back! We are reassembling the old crew and reanimating their bones for a new production to be shown in the fall of 2019! Keep an eye open for locations and times!  

An adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie


Set in the lobby of a small hotel on a West Side street in midtown New York during the summer of 1928. As written, it is essentially a long monologue delivered by a small time hustler named Erie Smith to the hotel’s new night clerk Charlie Hughes, lamenting how Smith’s luck has gone bad since the death of Hughie, Hughes' predecessor. O’Neill wrote Hughie in 1942, although it did not receive its world premiere until 1958.

In this production we are performing all of Mr. O’Neill’s stage directions, which are beautiful, prolific, and very much like short story in and of themselves. Normally the audience would not hear or experience any of these. Many of them deal with the inner lives of the two characters with an emphasis on Charlie Hughes, the night clerk, who has a very small number of lines in the play.

We have slowly explored the play since July of 2012, working intuitively, allowing room for additional modes of expression to develop from the text and our own instinctive reactions to it.  The play is performed in the round with just four chairs and one light bulb.  The actors create the different interior and exterior worlds with the help of original choreography and sound designs by Kevin Lawler, and musical compositions by Nevada Jones.


The Company


Nils Haaland – Erie Smith 
Doug Hayko – Night Clerk 
Mary Kelly – Fate 1
Erika Hall – Fate 2 

Mallory Prucha – Costumes
Nevada Jones – Original music
Kevin Lawler – Choreography, set, sound design and direction 

We hope to tour the play within the midwest and also to the Festival in Edinburgh as well as several other stops including Wales and London in 2013.

We are working to raise funds to help cover the cost of taking the show on tour. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation you may do so right here through our fiscal agent, Fractured Atlas. 

If you would like to help please contact [email protected] for all the details.