Gay McAuley graduated from the University of Bristol in 1962 with a BA (Combined Honours) in Drama, French and German. She spent six months at the Université de Strasbourg (1963) and then worked full time for the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London for nearly a year, before returning to the University of Bristol to undertake a PhD in the French Department. Her thesis was entitled An Analysis of Dramatic Method in the Plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, and the degree was awarded in 1969.

From 1968 to 1972 she was a Lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages at Macquarie University in Australia. In 1973 she was appointed to a Lectureship in French at the University of Sydney and she remained at that university for the next 28 years, first in the Department of French Studies, then as Co-ordinator of the interdisciplinary course in Performance Studies she initiated with other colleagues in 1988, and later as Director of the Centre for Performance Studies (1989-99) and then chair of the academic department it became (1999-2001). During much of this time, she continued to teach courses on theatre and film in the Department of French Studies, and her approach to the developing discipline of performance studies was strongly influenced by French critical theory, in particular by semiotics. Her book, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (University of Michigan Press, 1998), embodies the results of years of research into the performance practices of professional actors and directors, and exploration of the relevance of semiotic theory to the whole performance experience.

Direct observation of the creative process involved in performance making began as a means to the end of semiotic analysis of performance, but over time the rehearsal process itself became the focus of McAuley’s attention and it led to the extremely productive adoption of concepts and methods drawn from ethnography. Her book, Not Magic But Work: an Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process (Manchester University Press, 2012), while not published until after her retirement from the University of Sydney, is the outcome of the years of research and experimentation carried out with her colleagues there in collaboration with Australian theatre practitioners.

After her retirement from teaching in 2001, Gay McAuley was appointed an Honorary Associate in the Department of Performance Studies (2002-2016). During this time, she edited the department’s journal About Performance (2005-2010) as well as leading an interdisciplinary research seminar exploring the relationship between place and performance (2001-2005). The themed issues of About Performance she edited over the years reflect her research interests:

No. 4 (1998) Performance Analysis

No. 5 (2003) Body Weather in Central Australia

No. 6 (2006) Rehearsal and Performance Making Processes

No. 7 (2007) Local Acts: Site-Based Performance

No. 8 (2008) Still/Moving: Photography and Live Performance

No. 9 (2009) Playing Politics: Performance, Society, Community (with Paul Dwyer)

No. 10 (2010) Audiencing: the Work of the Audience in Live Performance (with Laura                              Ginters)

She also edited the book that emerged from the Place and Performance research project – Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place (Peter Lang, 2006).

In 2011 she moved back to the UK where she was appointed Distinguished Research Fellow in the Department of Drama & Theatre, Royal Holloway University of London (2013), and thereafter an Honorary Research Fellow in that department (2015-2019). In recent years she has devoted her time to translating from French works that might otherwise not be brought to the attention of English-speaking readers.