Barbara Jane Mackie is a BBC-trained screenwriter. Barbara's first musical 'Rumpy Pumpy!' played at the Theatre Royal, Windsor in November 2016 www.rumpypumpythemusical.co.uk. ''Rumpy Pumpy!' is now being developed into a feature film musical.
Building on the success of her first Musical Rumpy Pumpy! Barbara has written and composed 'Cowboy Girls', an exuberant and moving Western set in the 1880's focusing on the lives of two young peasant Irish Girls, the fearless Maeve and her younger sister
Bridge, shy and stammering who escape from their harsh convent in Ireland to sail off to America and head West in the Gold Rush .
On the Wagon Train, they decide they must dress as male cowhands, 'Marty' and 'Billy' to get jobs with the Cowboys. Adelaide, a society heiress, heading West on the trail of her fiancee, Charles, an English Charlatan, joins them and linking up, the three young women become 'Cowboy Girls', and then Rodeo Riders experiencing adventures they could only have dreamed of in their former lives. Adelaide falls in love with Maeve, telling her the West is a place women can cast off the shackles of their lives and live in a different way as they search for the freedom they never had before.
Barbara's Musical Supervisor is the Oscar
nominated John Cameron and her Musical Arranger is Steve Parker. Barbara has completed the British Musical Screenplay 'The Last Chance Mommas' (script available).'
At BBC Drama, Barbara was a producer,
story editor and script editor and developed the long running police series, 'Dangerfield', the award-winning film 'Bad Company', the film 'Seed' and the long -running series 'Dalziel and Pascoe'. Barbara has developed television dramas for Kudos, Picture Palace Productions and World Productions.
The Songs
'Cowboy Girls' is bold, highly original and enormous fun and puts the female at the very epi-centre of the Western and thus cleverly revives a flagging genre.'
Anthony Minghella, Oscar-winning Screenwriter