Robert L. Hughes

Robert L. Hughes first left his imprint as an artist when he created several "Happenings" or environmental theatre pieces as an undergraduate at Whittier College in California. At the time, he was influenced by the international avant-garde theatre movement that included playwrights such as Albee, Pinter and Ionesco; by the ritual theater of Jerzy Grotowski and by the sound works of John Cage. In Hughes' original work, Card Game, the audience was limited to fifty-two participants whose fate in the "Game" was partially determined by their "ticket" or luck of the draw from a deck of cards. The theatre piece put audience and actors both in situations that explored the balance and implications of fate and choice. The documentation of Card Game became an example of contemporary theatre in the curriculum at Whittier College and the piece turned out to be a forerunner of the reality entertainment programming that would become so dominant decades later. Hughes then spent a year in New Englan