Pamela G. Barnes
Filed under: Authors
Pamela Barnes grew up in England and obtained a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from University College, London and a Masters in Fine Arts from the Slade School, London, winning an award from there that enabled her to travel to the United States.
As a practicing artist, she chose to live in New York City and found her way into radio broadcasting. As she had grown up with radio rather than television, especially radio drama, she had developed what is called in the business "a good ear". Consequently, she produced many popular dramatic and literary shows, including a serial of P. G. Wodehouse's The Inimitable Jeeves, a six-part series of Djuna Barnes' Ladies Almanack, a series on Animals in Literature, including Aesop, Joel Chandler Harris, Enos Mills, Farley Mowat, etc., and adaptations of Charles Dickens' The Young David Copperfield, Dame Edith Sitwell's English Eccentrics, among many others.
However, it was The Mary Flowerpot Show, a weekly comedy in the tradition of Saturday Night Live, which was by far the most popular program that she developed. Entirely her own creation, she wrote, directed, acted in and produced this award-winning show which won a National Endowment for the Arts Grant for excellence in radio production.
On coming to the West Coast, she performs and lectures for honoraria at various venues such as giving recitals of Sappho's poetry with musical accompaniment at the San Francisco Main Library, lecturing on Victorian poets and poetry for the Robert and Elizabeth Browning Society of San Francisco, and giving recitals of Charles Dickens' Christmas stories at the Speech Arts Association of San Francisco. She holds herself available for commissions.
In a more personal vein, Pamela continues to write plays, poetry, and stories, most of which are unpublished at this time. An exception to this (aside from the above award for her war poem) is her production this month of a Pantomime called Puss-in-Boots Meets Rapunzel, a musical farce in the British theatrical style. She wrote the script with a cast of twenty, including fifteen songs from Broadway, Operetta, Music Hall, and folk traditions. She was its producer and director, and worked with a brilliant musical director, Ellen Hoffman, and two local communities who were its cast and crew. The audience declared it a success!
Winning Entry: Sixty-Two Haikus on World War II
Contest Won: War Poetry Contest 2004, Honorable Mention
