It's 1940 and across the country women are leaving their homes, shops and offices to take up new roles in the Women's Land Army. These Land Girls quickly learn new farming skills involving stock and crops.

Back to the Land takes a warm-hearted look at the lives and loves of a group of Land Girls making the best of their new situation in a hostel not very far from Berwick upon Tweed. Hailing from every class and county, sometimes jealousy and intrigue break out, but unity is ultimately achieved through the shared goal of safeguarding the nation's food production.

Based on the recollections of the women themselves, andliberally punctuated with the song and dance of World War II the play featured some Land Army veterans as themselves.

A brand new musical, a wonderfully upbeat story of unrequited love and a great comedy all rolled into one.

Think about it. Think what you could achieve without women in your life. If all the time you spent on them, you spent on yourself. Think how much money you could save. Think how much aggravation you could avoid.

Journeying from the West Indies to England, Ferdy, Lennie, Dennis and Bernie are eager to make successes of themselves and take full advantage of what they think 'The Big Life' has to offer. So they pledge to abstain from women for three years. But Mary, Kathy, Zuleika and Sybil have other ideas. They know that man cannot live by bread alone! Will the men stick with their idea of The Big Life, or will Cupid have the final say? 

The painful and sometimes farcical life of a defiant young poet, Sally Banner, as she attempts—through her school days, lovers, marriage and politics—to extract meaning from her environment.

Music by Frank Arndt.

Published individually, and also available in Australian Women’s Drama and Dorothy Hewett's Collected Plays Volume I

A heartbreaking tale of orphans, angels, murder and music - dramatised from the Whitbread award-winning novel set in 18th-century England. Winner of the Time Out Live Award for Best Play

In 18th-century Gloucestershire, the evil Otis Gardner preys on unmarried mothers, promising to take their babies (and their money) to Thomas Coram's hospital for foundling children. Instead, he buries the babies and pockets the loot.

Nowra’s vibrant play is set inside a psychiatric institution where Lewis, a university student, has been employed to direct a show. He becomes emotionally involved with his patients-cum-actors as his operatic production lurches forward and anti-Vietnam protests rage outside.

Winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Drama.

‘Nowra has written a terrific play about theatre, madness, illusion, sanity, life: it’s a big, splendidly Australian epic’ Frank Gauntlett, Telegraph Mirror

‘Nowra’s generous humour ... offers up a world of the most extraordinary, ordinary people; and a hilarious situation-comedy, to boot’ Angela Bennie, Sydney Morning Herald

Watch Barry Otto talk about Cosi at the 2011 Texts in the City; the centrepiece of Melbourne's UNESCO City of Literature Initiative.

'The funniest, bawdiest and most enchanting musical that Plautus, with a little help from Stephen Sondheim..., ever wrote.' New York Times

Loosely based on the plays of Plautus, A Funny Thing... ran for three years on Broadway. The first British production, starring Frankie Howerd as the cowardly slave Pseudolus, ran almost as long and spawned the TV series Up Pompeii!

'The comic plot never stops boiling in a show that creates mounting farcical mayhem with rare precision ... a brilliantly crafted hit' Daily Telegraph (UK)

'A delirium of good, clean, filthy fun' Independent

A Funny Thing... was Sondheim's third musical and the first for which he wrote the score as well as the lyrics.