Barbara Else is the author of eight novels (including 2 for children), best known for The Warrior Queen which was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
She has also edited several anthologies of stories for children. She has had work performed on stage and radio and won the 1990 Timaru Herald-Aoraki Festival Playwriting Award for Crazy Paving . was read at the 1988 Playwrights´ Workshop. In 1999 Barbara was Writer in Residence at Victoria University, and in 2005 was awarded a Scholarship in Letters. She has an MNZM for Services to Literature. She lives in Wellington and, with her husband writer Chris Else, runs an advisory service for writers.
Barbara Else
A group of school children are sent to the school's stage to do a project on the history of the world. Suddenly they get whisked back in time to the middle of the neolithic period to be followed by a stint on a sixteenth century pirate ship and then into the future to a ballet examination; finally they return to their own time as the bell rings.
Cast: 20
Barbara Else
The sea witch is messing up the ocean, and Aunt Thingy's cooking is revolting. With the help of Captain Pepper and an enormous pigeon, Joe and her grandparents survive a storm at seas and the shipwreck to put an end to both the Witch and Thingy.
Cast: 12
Barbara Else
It's the end of their school career for Debbie and Stacey - and the start of their adult lives. Scenes from women's lives from 1850 to 1969 highlight the choices open to women then and now. Suitable for all-women casts or girls' schools. 17 parts - 8 with doubling, written for young people.
Cast: 8 - 17
Barbara Else
In the last days of the typewriter two arguing women do their best to save the whales, completely unaware that the world outside their office has been centralised. With no warning, a technician arrives and tries to get them registered before it is too late. An absurdist comedy about bureaucracy, the advent of the computer age, and the individual.
Cast: 3
Barbara Else
A family tries to cope with the stress of chronic illness in one of its members.
Cast: 5
Barbara Else
Colman, a lawyer in mid-career, pays the night cleaner to listen to him: he's neglected his wife for years and now she's dying. Should he take home the pistol as requested?
Cast: 3
Barbara Else
Janine and Freda are about to go to tennis but Janine is worried that the cake she is taking is not good enough. Surburban neurosis takes over with the geriatric orchestra out in the garden, the camels in the fridge, and even the dinosaur in the linen cupboard.
Cast: 2
Barbara Else
After an apocalyptic war, society has split along gender lines. A young man arrives at the primitive abode of three women, an elderly man and a boy. His disguise is penetrated and love wins out.
Cast: 6
Barbara Else
Anna, 14, and Toby, 15, face with their family and friends the consequences of a first sexual encounter. Written for teenagers.
Cast: 6
Barbara Else
Theatre: is it magic, or is it sweat and bruises? Beverly, the practical stage manager, and Rachel the sophisticated actress, both want poor confused Leon. Charity, a refugee from the delicatessen counter, trespasses vaguely on their rehearsal of "Twelfth Night" and sees things from a different perspective.
Cast: 4
Barbara Else
With a new table to die for, Wilson Jones is on death's door following an episode of foul play. His wife, Lillian, looks decidedly guilty, but sometimes, no matter how loudly you confess - no one seems to hear. Written for radio.
Cast: 7
Barbara Else
Mrs Big's exclusive personal private treasure house is under siege by the bandits Bounder and Cad. But they don't pose half the threat that evil Hugo Huge does!
Cast: 8
Barbara Else
When John goes to a psychiatrists' conference he finds everyone wearing pin-striped suits - from the psychiatrists to shop assistants and taxi drivers. Only Joseph, a professional deviant, may wear a lavender safari suit. Eleven short scenes have John reeling as he struggles to understand the ironies, intricacies and hypocrisies of conforming.
Cast: 6
Barbara Else
A, B and C are caught in an absurdist nightmare.
Beckett style.
Cast: 3