Michael Gow's "Away" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Teaching this play cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Away is set for study in 2027-2028 in Year 12 for Advanced and Standard in Texts and Human Experiences

Brief description of Away

It is the summer of 1967, and three families re-enact their Christmas holiday rituals. Each family have their own conflicts, challenges and tensions, which Christmas and holiday preparation, seem to exacerbate.

The families are all connected to the same school and each family has their own deep challenges. The principal Roy and his wife Coral are trying to come to terms with the loss of their son in the Vietnam war. Two students, Tom and Meg have performed in the school play. Tom and his parents, Vic and Harry, are trying to cope with Tom’s serious illness, determined to make the most their time together. Meg and her family are fortunate in comparison as they are free of this kind of tragedy. But her mother Gwen is obsessed with achievement, financial security and status, so she constantly undermines the happiness of all of them. Thus, the conflict is set up early in the play and the dramatic interest comes from the way each family works through their problems and the comparison of their respective situations.

Each family goes on holiday and a Shakespearean-style storm brings them together. In these experiences the separate families are drawn together to confront their fears and tragic realities. Only then can they begin to heal.
Through this confrontation they come to powerful realisations, before their important experiences of reconciliation, healing and renewal.

The cyclical structure of the play begins and ends with extracts from Shakespeare. It opens with the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and closes with the beginning of King Lear so that the play moves from comedy to tragedy while paradoxically offering a sense of renewal.

Away has been previously set in 1989-1994, 1999, in Changing Self: 2001-2003, in Journeys: 2004-2008 and in EAL/D 2019-2026. This ensures many valuable resources for content, teaching and learning, including various HSC Texts guides.

Distinctive qualities of Away

• Australian, written by a successful Australian playwright and regarded as a significant example of contemporary Australian theatre
• Popular and critically well-received
• Accessible and short: this assists students with the play’s action, chronology and characters
• Its humour is both funny and moving
• Involves three families each of three members
• Its social and historical context adds interest: set in 1968, a time of change and turmoil in Australia including the Vietnam War, conscription, a conservative government and a monocultural society
• The characters are accessible but are also authentic and nuanced.
• It uses the quintessentially Australian Christmas holidays as its vehicle for insight and enlightenment
• 5-Act structure which covers distinct time periods:
  
  • Last night of school term
  • Last days of the year
  • New Year’s Day
  • Return
  • New school term
• The literary trope of the storm is a significant thematic and structural feature
• Shakespearean references and intertextuality allow for rich exploration
• Representation is a key concept in Texts and Human Experiences and given Away’s form as a playscript, there are many accessible features to build student understanding of “representation”
• The Currency edition contains three excellent essays to enrich student insights and understanding
• Away also enables authentic Module C experiences to generate skills and enjoyment of different writing styles

Ways to use Away in the classroom

Teaching this play cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Ways into the play

• Share with students the description above so they are oriented to the content and structure of the play.
• Share images of different productions 
• The significance of the title: consider the marketing impact of using this single word as the play’s title: what does it tell us if we wanted to see the play and were not familiar with it? 
• Discuss the various meanings of the word ‘away’: both literal and figurative. 
• How might being away or going away shape the process of growth and agency- in the play consider who develops agency as part of their growth?
• Discuss with the students the significance of Christmas holidays in the Australian context.
• Who goes away at this time? Do you go to the same place?
• For those who do go to the same place, who do you go with, what kind of recurring rituals are involved in this holiday e.g. same camping spot, after dinner games, sharing bedrooms with siblings and friends, bonfires 
• When you go away what do you learn about yourself, your family, the friends who go with you, the place you visit, the different ways people behave and interact when on holidays?
• Why do you think Michael Gow chose to use this archetypal Australian experience for his play?
• Later, consider: in what ways has Gow invited the audience to see the world differently and challenge our assumptions? 
• What do you think he might be intending to explore about human behaviour?
• Share with students that in Away each family is experiencing transition and while they are away on this beach holiday their experiences will shape those changes. The beach, like the bush, is a magical place in the Australian imagination and is a recurring motif in film and literature. The beach is a place of pleasure, freedom and egalitarianism. The families leave their homes emotionally bruised, and return healed from their time at the beach. 

Note: For students to succeed in Texts and Human Experiences it is important to highlight the significance of the concept of representation. The word “representation” occurs four times in the content description. It is important that students understand that representation aligns to the deliberate choices made by the composers, in this case the playwright Michael Gow to explore the ideas of the human experience. Students need to explore the text as a play or drama script and to use the conventions and terminology of drama in their discussion and responses. 

The social, historical and political context

Research the social, historical and political context of Away which is significant to the text’s representation of human experiences. Away was written in 1986 but Michael Gow deliberately chose to set the play 20 years earlier in the period of his own growing up – the 1960s. At this time, Australian society was changing dramatically. There had been a huge immigration program from Europe after the second world war, bringing refugees and others who had different languages and customs that some Australians found confronting. The generation who lived through the depression and the war were desperate for a peaceful and secure life; their children, brought up in peace and freedom wanted excitement and change. Their minds were open to new things, new ideas and this generation gap was striking. 

• Why does any composer decide to use a specific social, historical cultural and political context rather than a generic time and place?

A visual representation of the time for example, a PowerPoint would be an engaging way to share the context with your students.

Features of Australia in 1967 

• Australia’s population was 12 million and was essentially white and Anglo Saxon with post war immigration mainly from Britain and Southern Europe. Immigration from Asia and Africa was almost non-existent at this time.
• Australia was very conservative in many ways, but this was starting to change. 
• The play is set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and contains various references to life in Australia in 1968. 
It is funny yet sad, uplifting yet tragic and an insight into an Australia of different times, attitudes and values. 
• The government was the Liberal party under John Gorton and this was the last four years of conservative government in Australia. There was a feeling that Australia was on the brink of changes. In 1972 the Labor Party was victorious under Gough Whitlam and this was the beginning of major change in Australia.
• Australia was involved in the Vietnam War which was a divisive war and in 1968 it had escalated with little chance of resolution. In May 1968 three Australian journalists were killed in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh city). The war had become unpopular and protests against Australia’s involvement was growing. 
• From 1964-1972 Australia had system of military conscription which saw all young men over 20 as part of a ballot to determine whether they were conscripted into the army with the possibility of service in Vietnam. .
• There was a great deal of dissension and anxiety about conscription. 
• In July 50 students were arrested in an anti-war protest in Martin Place, Sydney and two days later 45 people were arrested in a similar rally in St Kilda, Melbourne. 
• The Australian Film Commission was established in this year and the National Gallery of Victorian is opened in Melbourne so there is an emerging cultural awareness that Australia has something to offer which is unique and its voice
• Economically Australia was prosperous and there was a strong Australian manufacturing base with semi-skilled and unskilled workers often finding employment in factories. 
• Despite a semblance of egalitarianism there was a degree of class consciousness with working class people often working in factories or in semi-skilled areas. 
• Although there was increased prosperity most Australians lived modest lives compared to today’s way of life and experiences e.g. holidays were often camping or simple family holiday homes in undeveloped beach locations where entertainment was essentially what families provided themselves.
• Higher education was still a major economic cost so this restricted many families from sending their children to university. The Whitlam government in 1972 changed this.

Exploring the structure of this five Act play

Consider:

• The exposition is the essential information a dramatist provides to an audience at the beginning of the play about the action, characters and some key ideas. What is established in the exposition of Away? How many scenes in this play comprise the exposition? Explore the dramatic purpose of the exposition.
• Consider how and why Gow has opened the play with the end of a Shakespearean comedy and closed with the beginning of a Shakespearean tragedy?
• What questions do we have after the first two scenes? Consider the relationships of Tom and Meg and the interplay between Gwen and Jim?
• Once each scene is considered a pattern should emerge. Is the focus in each scene:
  • About different characters?
  • Showing contrast or similarity?
  • About thematic concerns?
  • Showing the growth of a character or idea?
• What is the function of Act II: what have we by now realized about the characters and their worlds? Consider the importance of the setting in this Act? For example, scene i is the Gold Coast luxury hotel and scene ii is a tent and caravan city.
• Consider the contextual references are increasing e.g. Vietnam, national service, background of the families.
• Consider Act III and its role in its emotional and dramatic intensity: how much humour is there? When is the turning point?
• How does Act IV begin the process of reconciliation and renewal?
• How effective is the ending as the play’s conclusion? What is resolved? What is achieved? What have the characters, and the audience learnt? Is the ending satisfying? Is there any symmetry with the opening?
• In what ways does each Act contribute to the play as a whole play?
• Identify key scenes which you think will provide some rich evidence for the various features of texts and human experiences.

The Shakespeare framework

The Shakespearean framework is part of Gow’s deliberate and purposeful representation. Away is framed by two Shakespearean plays: Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. It starts with the epilogue from the comedy Midsummer Night’s Dream. The fact that the quoted section is from the end of that Shakespearean play foreshadows the end that is to come. A fantasy setting of fairies is included. This self-conscious metatheatrical referencing to the act of creating a play becomes an effective way of establishing for a modern audience that Gow’s play will not be naturalistic – in some parts it becomes surreal and over-dependent on coincidences. For example, a storm magically appears, driving all the characters to the same place where they discover reconciliation and acceptance. Apart from providing an excuse for later fantastical elements, the opening speech also begins one of the themes of the play: ‘restore amends’. Restoration is the desired outcome and for all the characters it is an acceptance of their trials but true restoration – that is of Tom’s life and Coral’s son’s life – cannot happen in the real world. 

King Lear is declared by the teacher to be a greater tragedy than Hamlet, which is only one man’s struggle. It is in King Lear that ‘the struggle between man and nature as well as man and man, and between man and himself’ takes place and it is all three types of such challenges that are evident in Away. In this ending we have a clear statement that the play is a tragedy about struggle not about death. If we follow this hint and go back through the play, we start to see that each family is struggling to cast off their burdens. Tom ends as he begins, reading Shakespeare, but the opening delight of the fairies is replaced by a sombre darkness- ‘Meantime shall we express our darker purpose.’ Lear is handing over his kingdom and is preparing to enter old age, approaching death, without the worries of ruling a kingdom. He wants to crawl to death ‘unburden’d.’ This invites us to see the play as being a space where characters can unburden themselves. For Tom, this leads to death but for others there is reconciliation and acceptance of their condition. 

Task: In what ways does the final scene of Away draw together the central concerns of the play? How does this scene represent growth and agency? In your response make detailed reference to your prescribed text. 

Characters and characterisation

This table explicitly uses features from the syllabus description of Texts and human experiences and completing the table could be an individual task or a collaborative exploration.

Consider these elements from the Stage 6 syllabus

• Students explore how texts can represent the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience, while examining the paradoxes of motivation and behaviour. 
• Through critical and creative responses to texts, students consider the ways that texts encourage them to reflect personally and challenge their assumptions about the nature of human experience.

Possible tasks

Teaching this play cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Module C opportunities

Provide opportunities for students to use their own experiences as the basis for their imaginative responses. The more this style of writing can be normalised students will grow their skills and capacity for writing under pressure.

Writing about own Christmas or other holiday experiences 

Give students these sentences to choose one which most resonates with them and use as the opening of a short piece of writing about their own Christmas or other holiday experiences:

This time in our family is when we realise that …
When I go away with my family I …
When our family and friends go to my uncle’s farm… (substitute any location including for example, a shack on the Hawkesbury, caravan at Bendalong, beside the Murrumbidgee …)
Sometimes it would be easier to stay at home…
Christmas holidays are not the same anymore since…

Write about 500-700 words and try to capture specific details of your experiences including concrete detail of your surrounds, the weather, your activities. Limit the characters to three and incorporate some growth and understanding through the experiences.

Alert students to revisiting their story later in the term to share in terms of editing and refinement.

Writing about a summer that changed you 

Share some of the Summer stories in the SMH in January 2025. In this Herald series, prominent artists, comedians, authors and journalists were invited to write about their “summer that changed everything”.

Stories that would be most engaging as models:

• Markus Zusak
• Peter Fitzsimons
• Shane Wright
• Wendy Harmer
• Sean Kelly
• Malcolm Knox
• Jordan Baker
• Kathy Lette
• Richard Glover
• Blak Douglas

Use these as a model for students own writing about a summer that changes them. 

Writing a discursive article 

In 2027 it is 60 years since Away was first performed. Write a 1000-word feature article in a discursive style which explores Australia then and now. Try to incorporate these features:

• Clever and original, even cryptic heading
• Engaging opening: witty/provocative/quirky 
• Intertextuality
• Recurring motifs e.g. holidays, song lyrics, a popular culture reference, phones
• Colloquial tone-conversational style
• Clever subheadings
• 3-4 images and captions
• Comments from reviews of the play 

In 2017 the Sydney Theatre Company staged a wonderful production of Away at the Sydney Opera House. Read the review in the SMH here.

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

Teaching this play cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

Away is an Australian drama text.

For the Advanced course 

Four prescribed texts to be studied with at least ONE from each of the following categories (prose fiction, poetry, and drama OR nonfiction OR film OR media) and ONE authored by Shakespeare.

For the Standard course 

Students are required to closely study three prescribed texts with ONE drawn from each of the following categories: prose fiction, poetry, drama OR film OR media OR nonfiction.

Possible pathways for HSC Advanced and Standard courses