AustLit logo
Michael Gow Michael Gow i(A30330 works by) (a.k.a. Michael William Gow)
Born: Established: 1955 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

BiographyHistory

Michael Gow was educated at the University of Sydney. While at university he became involved with the Sydney University Dramatic Society, consolidating his career in drama. During the 1980s he was cast in many film, television and theatre productions, including the feature film Stir and the television series The Young Doctors. Gow's writing for television also includes his adaptation of Edens Lost which won the 1989 AFI Award for Best Mini Series Screenplay.

Gow's first play, The Kid, was workshopped in 1982 and produced soon after. He has since written a number of plays, the most admired being Away (1986) which dramatizes the Australian ritual of the annual Christmas holiday at the beach. This play won many awards and continues to be produced in Australia and overseas. Gow has also dramatised Australia's colonial history in Europe (1987) and 1841 (1988).

Gow is a widely admired and highly sought after Director. Since the late 1980s he has directed plays for many theatre companies and festivals, primarily the Sydney Theatre Company. In 1999 he was appointed Artistic Director/CEO of the Queensland Theatre Company. He remained in that role until August 2010 when he returned to full-time writing.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2006 winner Matilda Awards Gold Award For direction of Queensland Theatre Company's productions of his play 'Away'; 'Private Lives' by Noel Coward; and 'Absurd Person Singular' by Alan Ayckbourn

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Once in Royal David’s City 2014 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2014 7009012 2014 single work drama

'Eloquent, playful, big-thinking, tender and fierce – Michael Gow’s new play is an astonishing act of theatrical invention.

'Will Drummond is bewildered. All the old certainties are coming apart. When he finds himself sitting by his mother’s bedside in a hospital room on the north coast of New South Wales, suddenly he’s faced with the mortality of loved ones, faced with the state of the world as it was and as it is right now. Set adrift, Will considers loss and what’s left, class and contradiction, and navigating a corporatised and globalised world alone.

'Once in Royal David’s City is big and small at once, tumbling from the fifties to the present, from East Berlin to Byron Bay, from brief encounters to the cycles of history. It’s about death and Christmas and class warfare and what to teach school children about politics and art. It’s about the old working class and the new middle class and what one has to learn from each other.

'It is beautiful.'' (Source: Belvoir website)

2017 shortlisted Helpmann Awards for Performing Arts in Australia Best Play
y separately published work icon Toy Symphony 2007 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2008 Z1440999 2007 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

'Roland Henning has writer's block. When he tries to explain the situation to a therapist, his story begins to tumble back and forth between his childhood in The Shire and his work as a playwright. At the root of it all is that extraordinary day in primary school which shattered his boyhood and plunged him headlong into the dizzy circus of life and art.'

Source: Belvoir Street website, http://www.belvoir.com.au
Sighted: 05/11/2007

2008 shortlisted Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Best Drama Script (Stage)
2008 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Drama
2008 winner Helpmann Awards for Performing Arts in Australia Best New Australian Work Nominated for the 2007 Company B production.
2007 winner Sydney Theatre Awards Best Mainstage Production Nominated for the 2007 Company B production.
2007 winner Sydney Theatre Awards Best New Australian Work Nominated for the 2007 Company B production.
y separately published work icon Sweet Phoebe 1994 Sydney : Currency Press Playbox Theatre , 1995 Z536541 1994 single work drama
1995 joint winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting
Last amended 25 Feb 2010 13:06:34
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X