Annie Barnes

Annie Barnes (19**-) Actress, children’s theatre author and practitioner.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Since the early 1980s she has been writing and directing plays for young audiences. She started the Two Hoots Company in Cape Town with Liz Mills in 19**. Moving to Johannesburg, she started the Out of the Box Company. Her work is characterised by audience participation. In Rainbow Land, an educational play about nature conservation, the ten to twelve year olds in the audience form an integral part of the action, representing the inhabitants of the endangered land. It is a technique also used in her other plays, e.g. The The Jubba Jugga Junkyard Jollies! and Hey!Hooray!. She also wrote Beware the Moonshadows.

She played in Tarradiddle Travels (Baxter Theatre 1980). She wrote and directed Once Upon a Bootless Christmas (Baxter 1981), Scoring the Goal (Baxter 1982), There's a Freebee in my Fishbowl (Baxter 1983) and Odds and Ends (Baxter 1983).