Louis Nowra is best known as one of Australia's leading playwrights.
29 Facts About Louis Nowra
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Louis Nowra's 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 had many international productions.
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Louis Nowra's 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.
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Louis Nowra has written two memoirs, The Twelfth of Never and Shooting the Moon.
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In March 2007, Louis Nowra published a controversial book on violence in Aboriginal communities, Bad Dreaming.
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Louis Nowra was one of the principal writers for the multi award-winning 2008 SBS TV series, First Australians.
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Louis Nowra is a cultural commentator, with essays and commentary appearing regularly in The Monthly and the Australian Literary Review as well as major newspapers.
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Louis Nowra has been married three times, and is bisexual, having had relationships with men as well.
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Louis Nowra was born Mark Doyle in Melbourne, to the second of his mother's three husbands.
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Louis Nowra's birthdays were never celebrated with parties when he was growing up, and he could never quite understand why.
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Louis Nowra's 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.
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Louis Nowra's mother was charged with murder but acquitted on the ground of extreme provocation after years of alcohol-fuelled violence.
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Louis Nowra in turn was abusive towards her own son, often telling him he was stupid and worthless, making him walk down the street in his sister's dresses as a punishment, and telling him he was "behind the door when looks were given out".
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Louis Nowra's father was abusive when he was around, but he was an interstate truck driver who was not often home.
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Louis Nowra's mother has not seen, heard or read any of his work, and he has had almost no contact with her since he left Melbourne.
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Louis Nowra has had no contact with his father at all.
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Louis Nowra developed an early love of theatre through his uncle Bob Herbert, a stage manager for J C Williamson's productions.
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Louis Nowra stood up, said he thought it was dreadful, walked out and never returned to finish his degree.
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Louis Nowra later had a difficult personal relationship with Patrick White.
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Louis Nowra attended the premiere of Nowra's translation of Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, but left the auditorium before the start because he thought, sight unseen, it would be uninteresting.
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Louis Nowra had a similarly challenging relationship with the actress Judy Davis, who appeared in some of his plays.
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Louis Nowra considered both White and Davis had personalities that combined self-loathing, narcissism, ruthlessness and haughty egos.
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Louis Nowra's first plays were written at La Mama Theatre in Melbourne in 1973.
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Louis Nowra reached the NSW coastal town of Nowra, when his car broke down.
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Louis Nowra had already decided to abandon his birth name, and chose Nowra because of this enforced stop.
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Louis Nowra worked in several jobs and lived an itinerant lifestyle until the mid-1970s, when his plays began to attract attention.
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Louis Nowra appeared in the 1988 Australian film The Everlasting Secret Family as a shop assistant, his only film acting role.
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Louis Nowra engaged in a number of gay relationships for some time, before marrying his second wife, television presenter Gerri Williams, at the Soho Bar in Kings Cross, in early 1997.
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Louis Nowra married his third and current wife, the author Mandy Sayer, in 2003.