Who’s Hugh Hughes?

In 2005, Hoipolloi began collaborating with emerging Welsh artist Hugh Hughes. Well, that’s what we tell our audiences. Hugh Hughes is the comic creation of Hoipolloi’s Artistic Director Shôn Dale-Jones, but Hugh is credited as the writer and performer, with Shôn and the rest of the team merely ‘Artistic Collaborators’. I suspect most of our audience have an inkling that Hugh isn’t real. Nonetheless, they leave a show feeling as though they have a relationship with Hugh, which doesn’t end just because they’ve left the theatre. We use the Internet to keep that relationship alive. Through our blog and Twitter, we give updates on what Hugh is up to, where he’s performing, who he’s meeting. Hugh recently unveiled the title of his new show on YouTube. And we use AudioBoo to record bite-size interviews, which I record and upload straight onto the net using my iPhone.
Online content is an increasingly important part of the overarching Hugh Hughes narrative. Hugh’s journey, from emerging artist to a performer travelling all over the world, is an essential part of the character and his work. Our plans for the future include a presentation of the trilogy of Hugh Hughes shows underpinned by online content, including photography, film, poetry and stories, with opportunities for the public to submit their own work. More and more, we enjoy a genuinely two-way conversation with audiences. We’ve received a number of heartfelt emails addressed to Hugh, and of all our online tools, my favourite is the Hugh Hughes Facebook Group because we didn’t set it up. It was created by a group of friends who’d seen ‘Floating’, and now has 350 members. Although we post Hugh’s tour dates there, most of the content is user-generated, as fans write on the wall and start discussion threads.

Twitter is also a powerful tool. When travelling, I can enjoy conversations with lots of different Hoipolloi fans, sometimes talking about the shows, sometimes about the weather. Word of mouth is what often sells Hoipolloi shows and Twitter often provides fascinating insights into what people are saying about you. When ‘Floating’ played Sydney Opera House in March, I was delighted to find people using Twitter to recommend the show to their friends and report how much they enjoyed it. We’re currently enjoying a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it will be interesting to see how this trend continues. All this stuff is fun but never underestimate how time consuming it is. So why do we devote so much time to it? For audience development? Or as an artistic project in itself? Both, I would argue. As we document the development of productions, we begin to develop an audience for them. We also provide an educational resource: we can’t let anyone and everyone into rehearsal rooms (though we receive many requests), but we can post interviews with the creative team online, to share as much as we can. And if you know about the creative journey leading towards a show, that arguably informs your experience of, and becomes a rewarding part of, the show itself.
The Internet allows us to share what we do, inviting audiences in and including them in the process. This leads us back to our mission to make work which is “accessible and engaging to all”. The company’s co-founders created that mission 15 years ago. Who could have foreseen what a central role the Internet would play in providing that access?