Waterford — For Sarah Hughes, a life in theater all started two decades ago with a rejection after trying out for the part of Scout in the Stonington Players production of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

She was too tall at age 12 to play the part of a child. So instead she worked backstage helping with props and watching her mom and dad perform in the play, directed by Linda MacCluggage.

"That was when I realized there were other things in theater besides acting," Hughes said.

The former Stonington resident and Williams School graduate, now 33 and living in Brooklyn, N.Y., has parlayed that epiphany into a career that brought her this week to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center as part of its National Directors Fellowship, or NDF, program. She is one of five theater directors, out of more than 200 who applied from throughout the country, to be chosen for the prestigious fellowship, which offers 18 months of training, mentorship and networking that leads to a professional directing opportunity.

The 5-year-old fellowship program, which coincides with the O'Neill's National Playwrights Conference, is under the direction of Wendy C. Goldberg, who also directs the two-week pilgrimage of leading writers for the stage who are developing new works on the Waterford campus in collaboration with dramaturges and professional actors.

"NDF fills a very specific need in our field since few opportunities exist for emerging directors with a new play focus," Goldberg said in a statement. "Evidenced by the success of our first four classes of fellows, I've been encouraged by the industry's collective response."

As for Hughes, Goldberg noted she has been actively directing new work, "with acclaim," in New York City but is interested in a wider-ranging regional theater career.

"She is ready to step outside of the circles in which she is already well known," Goldberg said, "and NDF is able to support her with connections and positions on a national level."

Hughes describes much of her directing work as "off-off Broadway," mostly involving "super weird" and experimental theater; some sample titles include "A Walrus in the Body of a Crocodile" and "Special Cheese." A graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in theater and creative writing, she spent several years with a New York-based theater group called Elevator Repair Service that specialized in adaptations of great works of literature, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," spending much of her time as a stage manager or assistant director.

In January, she got a new position as director of artistic programming for Theatre Row, an organization that supports creative theatrical endeavors in New York City. It's a shift for Hughes to presenting and producing, though she plans to keep her hands in directing, as well.

But it was in southeastern Connecticut that she got her start. An only child of Nancy and Owen Hughes, she moved with her family to Stonington when she was in eighth grade, immediately immersing herself in local theater, including high school productions both as an actor and behind the scenes. She also worked as head counselor for the Thames Valley Music School Arts Camp at Connecticut College.

It was her work with Flock Theatre, though, that provided the bridge to her professional career. She was involved in an adaptation of "The Birds," sang in the chorus for "Romeo & Juliet" and got involved in puppetry for a creative production of the classic "Oedipus Rex." 

She also was one of the winners in a Young Playwrights competition sponsored by Hartford Stage in which she got to work with a professional playwright and director.

"That was really exciting," Hughes said.

At Dartmouth, she remembers directing a production of Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit," in which there literally was no exit during the play from the basement room accessible only by a trap door in the stage.

Strangely, though she lived in the area for years and regularly visited nearby Harkness Memorial State Park, Hughes never spent any time at the O'Neill. And she was at first reluctant to come home again for the National Directors Fellowship, but was convinced by Dartmouth friends that it would be a great experience.

"There's not a lot of opportunities for directors to get connected and gain new skills," she said.

At the O'Neill, directors are mostly observing the process of developing new plays, including "Winter People," one of the productions presented on stage Friday. They also sit in the audience and take in the reaction of O'Neill conference attendees as they see new, often edgy plays unveiled.

"You learn an unbelievable amount in front of an audience the first time," Hughes said.

For playwrights, the reaction can feel high-stakes, with the hope that everything will go off perfectly. But that is rarely the case, as sharing in creation takes a certain amount of patience and forgiveness, she said.

"When a play is in that stage of development, it's not supposed to be there yet," she added.

Hughes likes working with living playwrights, as opposed to directing older works in which collaboration is impossible because the writer no longer is alive.

"Each relationship with a playwright is different," she said. "I try to give the playwright space to really be able to hear the play for what's working and not working."

Hughes is particularly drawn to what she calls "hybrid" work, such as plays sprinkled with some folk music and hip hop or a concert in which spoken words are integrated. She also praised a trend toward "immersive theater" in which people are eating and drinking and maybe even checking on their phones occasionally while also being drawn into the action onstage, giving audiences a "real event feel" while proprietors also can make some extra money beyond the ticket price.

Another trend she likes is the fact that even some of New York's bigger productions are allowing story lines to remain messy, with lots of questions lingering at the end.

"It's not tied up in a neat bow," she said. "There's a lot of pushing toward work that can hold ... a lot of complexity."

l.howard@theday.com