Benjamin Ashley Hodges

Ben Hodges holds a BFA in Theatre from Otterbein University, is an alumnus of the Commercial Theater Institute, and holds a 2012 Juris Doctor degree from Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey. He is a licensed attorney in the states of New York and Tennessee, focusing on criminal law, entertainment, contract, family, landlord/tenant, and estate planning law, with associated and necessary litigation. 

He served as an editorial assistant for seven years on the 2001 Special Tony Honor Award-winning Theatre World, becoming the associate editor to John Willis in 1998 and editor in chief in 2007. Theatre World was for sixty-nine years the oldest, most complete annual pictorial and statistical record of the American theatre. Theatre World Volume 69: 2012-2013 was the last volume of the series to be published in hard cover. 

The Commercial Theater Institute Guide to Producing Plays and Musicals which Hodges coedited with late Commercial Theater Institute director Frederic B. Vogel, was released by Applause Theatre and Cinema Books in 2007, and has become the definitive resource in its field.

Forbidden Acts, the first collected anthology of gay and lesbian plays from the span of the twentieth century, edited and with an introduction by Hodges, was published by Applause Theatre and Cinema Books in 2003 and became a finalist for the 2004 LAMBDA Literary Award for Drama. It has been adopted as a course book by New York University, Cornell University, and many other colleges and universities.

His Out Plays: Landmark Gay and Lesbian Plays from the Twentieth Century, edited and with an introduction by Hodges, featuring a foreword by Harvey Fierstein and a new introduction to The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley, was released by Alyson Books in spring 2008.

His The Play That Changed My Life, with essays by scores of America’s foremost American playwrights including Christopher Durang and Doug Wright, was released by Applause Books in 2009. 

He also served on the New York Innovative Theatre Awards Committee, selecting outstanding individuals for recognition Off-Off-Broadway.

He was an assistant public defender for the 3rd Judicial District of Tennessee, from September 1, 2022-September 1, 2023, after which he returned to private practice in his hometown of Morristown, Tennessee, where he currently resides and practices.