Louis Nowra

Mark Doyle, better known by his stage name Louis Nowra, (born 12 December 1950) is an Australian writer, playwright, screenwriter and librettist.

He is best known as one of Australia's leading playwrights. His works have been performed by all of Australia's major theatre companies, including Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Belvoir, and many others, and have also had many international productions. His most significant plays are Così, Radiance (both of which he turned into films), Byzantine Flowers, Summer of the Aliens and The Golden Age. In 2006 he completed The Boyce Trilogy for Griffin Theatre Company, consisting of The Woman with Dog's Eyes, The Marvellous Boy and The Emperor of Sydney, all directed by David Berthold.

His 2009 novel Ice was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. His script for 1996 movie Cosi, which revolves around a group of mentally ill patients who put on a play, won the Australian Film Institute Award that year for Best Adapted Screenplay. Nowra's work as a scriptwriter also includes a credit on the comedy The Matchmaker and the Vincent Ward romance Map of the Human Heart, which was invited to the Cannes Film Festival.

His radio plays include Albert Names Edward, The Song Room, The Widows and the five part The Divine Hammer, which aired on the ABC in 2003.

He has written two memoirs, The Twelfth of Never (1999) and Shooting the Moon (2004). In March 2007, Nowra published a controversial book on violence in Aboriginal communities, Bad Dreaming. He was also one of the principal writers for the multi award-winning 2008 SBS TV series, First Australians.

Nowra is also a cultural commentator, with essays and commentary appearing regularly in The Monthly and the Australian Literary Review as well as major newspapers. He has been married three times, and is bisexual, having had relationships with men as well.

Biography Nowra was born Mark Doyle in Melbourne, to the second of his mother's three husbands. His mother told him as a boy that he would hear stories about her having killed a man, but he was not to believe any version but her own, which she would not reveal until his 21st birthday. His sister later told him that their mother had killed her own father, their grandfather. On his 21st birthday, 12 December 1971, his mother confirmed this, and said that it had occurred on 12 December 1945, exactly five years before he was born. His mother was charged with murder but acquitted on the ground of extreme provocation after years of alcohol-fuelled violence. He developed an early love of theatre through his uncle Bob Herbert, a stage manager for J. C. Williamson's productions.

His first plays were written at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in 1973. they co-wrote some of the music for his stage works. He married his third and current wife, the author Mandy Sayer, in 2003. They had worked together when they co-edited the anthology In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars in 2000. They have separate homes not far from each other, in which their daytime writing activities are conducted, and they come together in the evening. In February 2014 they were named joint holders of the 2014 Copyright Agency Non-Fiction Writer-in-Residence at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Nowra's plays are studied in Veronica Kelly's work The Theatre of Louis Nowra.

Awards 1990 – Prix Italia award, for the radio play Summer of the Aliens 1992 – Winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Prize for the play Cosi 1994 – Winner of Victoria Premier's, Louis Esson Prize for Drama for The Temple 1994 – Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for Radiance and The Temple 1994 – The Australia/Canada Award 1996 – Australian Film Institute Award – Best Adapted Screenplay for Cosi 1999 – Nominated for Green Room Award Best New Australian Play for Language of the Gods 2009 – First Australians: Logie Award: Outstanding Documentary or Documentary Series

Works

Plays

Kiss The One-Eyed Priest (1973) Death of Joe Orton (1974) Inner Voices (Currency Press, 1977) The Lady of the Camellias (1979) Visions (Currency Press, 1979) Beauty and the Beast (1980) Cyrano De Bergerac (1980; translation of Edmond Rostand's French play) Inside The Island (Currency Press, 1981) The Precious Woman (Currency Press, 1981) Lulu (1981; adapted from Frank Wedekind's Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box) The Prince of Homburg (1982) Royal Show (1982) Spellbound (1982) Sunrise (Currency Press, 1983) Albert Names Edward (Currency Press, 1983) The Golden Age (Currency Press, 1985) The Song Room (Editions Rodopi, 1987) Capricornia (Currency Press, 1988; adapted from Xavier Herbert's novel) Byzantine Flowers (1989) Watchtower (1990) The Lewis Trilogy: Summer of the Aliens (Currency Press, 1992) Così (Currency Press, 1992) This Much Is True (Currency Press, 2017) Radiance (1993) The Temple (1993) Crow (1994) Incorruptible (Currency Press, 1995) Jungle (1995) Miss Bosnia (1995) Language of the Gods (Currency Press, 1999) Beatrice (2003) Devil Is A Woman (2004) The Boyce Trilogy: The Woman with Dog's Eyes (2004) The Marvellous Boy (2005) The Emperor of Sydney (2006) Page 8 (2006)

Non-fiction writing The Cheated (Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1979) Warne's World (Duffy & Snellgrove, Australia, 2002) Chihuahuas, Women and Me (Giramondo, Australia, 2005) Bad Dreaming (Pluto Press, Australia, 2007) Kings Cross: A Biography (NewSouth Publishing, Australia, 2013) Woolloomooloo: A Biography (NewSouth Publishing, Australia, 2017) Sydney: A Biography (NewSouth Publishing, Australia, 2020)

Novels The Misery of Beauty (Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1976) Palu (Picador, Australia, 1987) Red Nights (Picador, Australia, 1997) Abaza (Picador, Australia, 2001) Ice (Allen & Unwin, 2008) Into That Forest (Allen & Unwin, 2012)

Memoirs The Twelfth of Never (Picador, Australia, 1999) Shooting the Moon (Picador, Australia, 2004)

Screenwriting Displaced Persons (1985) (TV film) Hunger (1986) The Lizard King (1986) The Last Resort (TV series, 1988) Map of the Human Heart (1992) Heaven's Burning (1997) Radiance (associate producer/writer, 1998) Twisted Tales Directly From My Heart to You (1996) The Matchmaker (screenplay, 1997) Così (screenplay, 1997) K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) Black and White (2002) Rain of the Children (additional dialogue, 2008)

Libretti Inner Voices Victorian State Opera, 1978 Whitsunday Opera Australia, 1988 Love Burns Seymour Group, 1992 Adelaide Festival of Arts On the Beach Victorian Arts Centre Rio Tinto Grant 2000 Midnight Son, Victorian Opera 2012

Anthologies In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars: A Literary Adventure Through Kings Cross (2000; ed. Louis Nowra, Mandy Sayer)

Essays Nowra has also published a number of essays: , The Monthly, December 2009 – January 2010, pp. 44–52. ,The Monthly, February 2010, pp. 22–29 , The Monthly, March 2010, pp. 40–46.