Context and Authorial Purpose (HSC SSCE English Standard): Revision Notes
Context and Authorial Purpose
Introduction to the play
Away by Michael Gow premiered in 1986 at Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company, marking an important moment in Australian theatrical history. The play is set during the summer holidays of 1967-68, following three families as they journey to the coast for their Christmas break. Through these family holidays, Gow examines how people respond to grief, navigate class differences, and confront mortality. The playwright deliberately uses Shakespeare's works, particularly A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear, as a structural framework to explore these themes. Gow's overarching aim was to show how personal connections and reconciliation can help heal the divisions in society.
The use of Shakespearean works as a structural framework is not merely decorative—it reflects how Australian theatre was engaging with British cultural traditions whilst developing its own distinct voice. The plays chosen (A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear) both deal with transformation, conflict, and reconciliation, making them ideal lenses through which to view the Australian family experience.
Historical and cultural context
Understanding the context in which Away was written and set helps us appreciate the deeper meanings in the play. There are two important time periods to consider: the 1960s when the play takes place, and the 1980s when Gow actually wrote it.
1960s setting (the play's timeframe)
The play captures Australia in the late 1960s, a period of significant social anxiety and change. This was during the Whitlam era, and several key issues shaped Australian life at this time:
Vietnam War impact: The Vietnam War and military conscription deeply affected Australian families. In the play, Coral's mental breakdown stems from losing her son in Vietnam, representing the devastating impact of war on the home front. Many families experienced similar trauma as young Australian men were conscripted to fight overseas.
Youth population boom: Approximately 40% of Australia's population was young people during this period, creating a generation gap and tensions between traditional values and emerging youth culture. This demographic shift influences the play's focus on young characters like Tom and Meg.
Suburban aspiration: Post-war prosperity led to growing suburban development and materialistic ambitions. The play captures this through Gwen's obsession with appearances and social status, contrasting it with Tom's working-class family who struggle financially but maintain their dignity.
The character of Gwen embodies the "nouveau riche" phenomenon of the 1960s—families who had recently achieved middle-class status and were anxious to distinguish themselves from their working-class origins. This anxiety manifests in her obsession with maintaining appearances and judging others based on material possessions.
Class divisions: Sharp social hierarchies divided Australian society. Gwen represents the nouveau riche (newly wealthy) who look down on working-class families like Tom's. Meanwhile, migrant families like Harry and Vic's bring optimism and hope, contrasting with established Anglo-Australian privilege and prejudice.
Cultural identity: Australia was grappling with questions of national identity before the 1988 Bicentenary celebrations. Shakespeare's presence in the play (through the school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and structural echoes of King Lear) reflects how Australians used British cultural references whilst developing their own distinct identity.
1980s writing context
When Gow wrote Away in the mid-1980s, Australia was experiencing its own set of challenges and transformations:
Economic reform: The Hawke-Keating government was implementing major economic deregulation, changing Australia's financial landscape and creating new social pressures around money and success.
AIDS crisis: The 1980s saw the devastating AIDS epidemic, initially called the 'gay plague' due to prejudice and fear. Tom's unexplained terminal illness resonates with this context. Gow himself lost friends to AIDS, and the disease's impact on young lives permeates the play's emotional core. The fear and stigma surrounding AIDS in the 1980s adds another layer to how audiences understood Tom's fate.
This context is crucial for understanding the play's contemporary reception and why Gow chose not to explicitly identify Tom's illness. By keeping it ambiguous, he made the experience universal whilst allowing 1980s audiences to recognize the AIDS crisis's impact on young lives.
Post-Vietnam reflection: By the 1980s, Australians were engaging in national introspection about the Vietnam War following the moratorium movements. The play's treatment of Coral's grief allowed audiences to process collective trauma from this conflict.
Family breakdown: Rising divorce rates and changing family structures characterised the 1980s. Youth counterculture challenged traditional authority, reflected in the generational tensions throughout Away.
Multiculturalism: New multicultural policies were reshaping Australian society, making the play's portrayal of migrant experiences particularly relevant.
Environmental events: Storm scenes in the play echo the El Niño floods affecting Australia, grounding the symbolic storm in real environmental experiences.
Personal influences: Gow's own losses—friends who died from AIDS and family upheavals—brought autobiographical authenticity to the play's exploration of grief and mortality.
Authorial background
Michael Gow was born in 1955 and became one of Australia's significant theatre practitioners. When he wrote Away at age 31, he was already an established playwright with a deep understanding of family dynamics, having written earlier works like Out of the Question (1978).
Gow's career as NSW State Theatre artistic director (1999-2014) demonstrated his commitment to Australian theatre. Before writing Away, he had directed a production of Shakespeare's King Lear, which profoundly influenced his approach to the play. He was inspired by Shakespeare's rejection of literal realism and his ability to use theatrical conventions to reveal deeper truths about human nature.
Gow's direct experience directing King Lear gave him intimate knowledge of how Shakespeare used storm scenes as catalysts for character transformation. This influenced his decision to structure Away around a similar storm that strips away pretensions and forces characters to confront their authentic selves.
The playwright drew from multiple sources for Away: childhood memories of beach holidays, observations of migrant neighbours, and experiences with school plays. This personal foundation, combined with his theatrical expertise, allowed him to blend realistic family interactions with ritualistic and symbolic elements. His work emerged during a crucial period when Australian theatre was asserting its own voice, moving beyond simply importing British productions to creating distinctly Australian dramatic works.
Authorial purpose
Gow had clear intentions when writing Away, using the play to explore fundamental questions about human nature and society.
Central purpose: human resilience through shared vulnerability
At its core, Away aims to reveal how people find strength through acknowledging their vulnerabilities together. Gow uses the holiday setting as a crucible—a testing ground where characters' pretensions are stripped away, forcing them to confront their authentic selves.
Character Transformations: From Pretension to Authenticity
The play demonstrates transformation through each family:
- Gwen must abandon her class-based snobbery and material obsessions
- Coral needs to release her paralysing grief over her son's death
- Harry and Vic face their son Tom's impending death with courage and dignity
Each character begins the play performing a role (the snob, the grief-stricken zombie, the pretender) but the storm and shared experiences force them to drop their masks and reveal their authentic humanity.
Gow employs what we call Shakespearean performativity throughout the play. This concept refers to how theatre and performance become tools for understanding and healing. The school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the beginning and the climactic The Stranger on the Shore performance at the end suggest that life itself is like a play, where we perform various roles (the snob, the grief-stricken zombie, the pretender). However, these performed roles can eventually give way to authenticity when we drop our masks.
Understanding Shakespearean Performativity
This is one of the most crucial concepts for analysing Away. Shakespearean performativity doesn't mean characters are "acting fake"—rather, it recognizes that we all perform various social roles in daily life. The key insight is that theatrical performance can paradoxically reveal deeper truths by allowing us to step outside our everyday roles and see ourselves more clearly. When Coral performs in Tom's play, she's using performance to heal, not to hide.
The storm serves as a catalyst, deliberately echoing the blasted heath scene in King Lear, where Shakespeare's titular character loses everything and discovers his fundamental humanity. Similarly, Gow's storm transforms division into communion, forcing the separated families to come together and recognise their shared humanity.
Specific intentions
Gow had three particular goals that work together to achieve his central purpose:
Grief's universality: Tom's leukaemia functions as more than an AIDS allegory, though it certainly resonates with the 1980s epidemic. By making Tom's illness universal and not explicitly identifying it, Gow forces audiences to engage with the broader experience of loss. The play shows how grief affects everyone differently—Coral becomes disconnected from reality, whilst Harry and Vic try to create meaningful final experiences for their son. This collective mourning brings the community together rather than dividing it.
Class reconciliation: The developing friendship between Gwen and Vic serves to critique the aspirational cruelty of 1980s society, where people judged others based on wealth and status. Initially, Gwen's nouveau riche snobbery creates painful divisions, particularly in her cruel treatment of Tom's family. However, her transformation demonstrates that compassion and genuine connection matter more than social standing. The reconciliation between these women from different classes offers hope that society can overcome its divisions.
The friendship between Gwen and Vic is particularly significant because it crosses not just class boundaries but also represents different Australian experiences—Gwen as established (though newly middle-class) Anglo-Australian, and Vic as a working-class migrant family. Their reconciliation symbolizes a broader hope for Australian society to overcome its divisions.
Performativity as healing: Tom's role as director of The Stranger on the Shore performance becomes central to Coral's recovery from grief. Through participating in this creative ritual, Coral can symbolically process her loss and reconnect with the living world. This reflects Gow's deep belief in theatre-as-ritual, where performance becomes a sacred space for working through trauma and finding meaning. The play itself enacts this ritual for audiences, inviting them into a transformative experience.
Purpose in Human Experiences Module
Away serves as an ideal text for the 2027 HSC Texts and Human Experiences module because it expertly models how individual transformation occurs within collective contexts.
Individual and collective experiences
The play demonstrates how personal crises reflect and connect to broader societal wounds. Each character's individual journey illuminates universal human experiences whilst remaining grounded in specific Australian social contexts. Tom's illness, Coral's grief, and the families' various struggles all serve as entry points into larger questions about war, migration, inequality, and community.
Multiple temporal perspectives
A fascinating aspect of studying Away is its layered time periods: the 1960s setting, viewed through a 1980s lens, now examined from a 2027 perspective. This layering invites rich analysis of how human responses change across time whilst fundamental experiences remain constant:
- Vietnam War grief in the 1960s parallels contemporary climate anxiety
- Class tensions from the play echo current housing affordability debates
- Family breakdown in the 1980s resonates with modern relationship challenges
When analysing Away, consider how your own contemporary perspective adds a third layer of interpretation. What concerns of 2027 might shape how you read the play differently from audiences in 1986? How do timeless human experiences (grief, love, mortality) remain constant across all three time periods?
Dramatic craft and structure
Gow's five-act ritual structure teaches students about how dramatic form can illuminate themes of endurance and resilience. The play's structure follows a classical pattern: establishment of conflicts, escalation through the storm, and resolution through reconciliation. This ritual framework mirrors ancient dramatic traditions whilst addressing contemporary Australian experiences.
Holiday liminality
The holiday setting creates what scholars call a liminal space—a threshold between ordinary life and transformation. During holidays, normal social structures temporarily dissolve, allowing characters to step outside their usual roles and discover new ways of relating to each other. This liminality fosters empathy across social divides, showing how shared experiences can break down barriers.
Understanding Liminality
"Liminal" comes from the Latin word for "threshold." Liminal spaces are in-between places where normal rules don't fully apply—like holidays, festivals, or theatrical performances. In Away, the holiday setting removes characters from their everyday environments, creating opportunities for transformation that wouldn't be possible in their regular lives. Think about how the beach, the storm, and the performance spaces all function as liminal zones where change becomes possible.
Universal themes
Students can explore how Away addresses timeless human experiences: confronting mortality, overcoming prejudice, healing from trauma, finding meaning through art, and building community. These themes remain relevant across generations, making the play a powerful tool for understanding human nature whilst developing critical analysis skills.
Key Points to Remember:
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Away was written in 1986 but set in 1967-68, creating two important contexts to consider: the 1960s setting reflecting Vietnam War trauma and class divisions, and the 1980s writing context influenced by the AIDS crisis and economic reform.
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Gow's central purpose is to reveal human resilience through shared vulnerability, using the holiday crucible to strip away pretensions and expose authentic humanity.
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Shakespearean performativity is key to the play—theatre becomes a healing ritual where performed roles give way to authenticity, particularly through Tom's direction of Coral in The Stranger on the Shore.
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The play addresses three specific intentions: demonstrating grief's universality through Tom's illness, achieving class reconciliation through Gwen and Vic's friendship, and showing performativity as healing through theatrical ritual.
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For the Human Experiences module, Away models individual transformation within collective contexts, inviting analysis of how personal crises reflect societal wounds and how human responses change across time whilst fundamental experiences remain constant.
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The liminal space of the holiday setting allows characters to step outside their usual roles and discover new ways of relating, fostering empathy and transformation across social divides.