Michael Gow

Michael Gow is an Australian playwright and director most famed for his 1986 work Away. He has been the Artist Director for Queensland Theatre Company since 1999. Productions he has directed for the company include: Private Fears in Public Places, John Gabriel Borkman, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2007); The Importance of Being Earnest, A Shakespeare Commentary, I Am My Own Wife, (2008); The School of Arts and The Crucible (2009).

Away is the story of three Australian families who go on holiday "up the coast" for Christmas 1967 as a remedy to personal crises, whose story threads eventually interconnect. The families cross the class and social divides: one is in a smart hotel, another is at the local caravan park; another is in the throes of possible divorce. These factors are woven into a story of love and loss that allows a young boy and girl to taste first love and the pain of death while their parents cope, more or less, with the consequences. It remains a landmark of Australian contemporary drama and the best of Gow's earlier work.Europe is also an intriguing work as a young man and a European actress of uncertain age meet in her dressing room.Gow had not written a full length play for ten years while fully engaged as artistic director of QTC – Queensland Theatre Company – then produced Toy Symphony in 2007, which received its world premiere production at Belvoir St Theatre. It was a critical and popular success, starring Richard Roxburgh in his first...
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