Education
Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Hughes graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1977 and moved to New York City two years later to become a feminist painter. She eagerly attended many such parties, became involved with the group and began doing theater with them because "that"s what they were doing".
Career
She began as a feminist painter in New York but is best known for her connection with the National Education Association Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women"s One World Cafe. Her plays explore sexuality, body images and the female mind. She teaches fine arts at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.
There she found lesbian women stripping, kissing booths, and a highly sexual atmosphere.
Hughes" first performance at the Women"s One World Cafe (Wow Cafe) in the early 1980s was a piece called "My Life as a Glamour Don"t", about various fashion mistakes. She followed this up with "Shrimp in a Basket" and then her breakthrough.
At the WOW Cafe, Hughes felt that she was able to "tell the stories she so desperately wanted to be told as a child." Hughes wrote, directed and performed in. Critic Stephen Holden commented, in reviewing the play, "While Mississippi
Hughes"s more poetic writing recalls Sam Shepard, the campy B-movie side of her sensibility shows her to be equally in tune with John Waters"s movies and Charles Busch"s drag extravaganzas." Focusing on the subjects of sexuality, masturbation and Jesus, her plays usually explore issues that she confronted as a young woman in college.
In 1990 Hughes earned national attention as one of the so-called National Education Association Four, artists whose funding from the National Endowment for the Arts ("National Education Association") was vetoed. In 1996, Hughes released perhaps her most famous and influential performances: Clit Notes. In this piece, Hughes performs several roles: herself at different ages, her mother, and various lovers that she has had.
Hughes uses her writing to explore herself and to understand the events that have shaped her life, often using her writing to escape from elements that she perceives as repressive.
She started her career as a performance artist in. Hughes works as an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design.In 2010, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.