Cirrus@Austlit

Both of Darrelyn Gunzburg's paternal grandparents were Russian, and her maternal grandfather was Polish. The daughter of Esme and Michael Gunzburg, she attended Mt Lawley Senior High School in Western Australia, did Seventh Grade Honours, Australian Musical Examinations Board (AMEB) Speech and Drama in 1973, and completed two years of an Arts Degree at the University of Western Australia. She began her working life as a fire-eater with a circus, and spent the next decade of her life learning the craft of film-making by working on feature film crews. She worked in Fred Schepisi's production house in Melbourne, her crew credits including Tandarra, Eliza Fraser, Against The Wind, The Last Wave and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, before moving to Sydney where she wrote and directed documentaries for Film Australia (1980-1983).

She left Film Australia to take the postgraduate Director's course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1985 and writing and directing her first play, Fishbein Vs Leibowitz. Since then she has been a fulltime playwright and director. She has continued her education by taking a number of courses through the Australian Film and Televsion School (AFTRS), and French in Action via Open Learning, University of New England.

Gunzburg was dramaturg for the State Theatre Company of South Australia (SA) in 1986, and also worked with, among other companies, Vitalstatistix and Doppio Teatro in Adelaide. She was the inaugural editor of Dialogue, the newsletter of the Australian National Playwrights' Centre, and a member of its Board of Directors 1989-91. She was a play assessor for the Australian National Playwrights' Centre, the State Theatre Co of SA and the Australian Writers' Guild. She has edited also the Federation of Australian Astrologers (FAA) Journal and Lowdown (Youth Performing Arts in SA).

Her plays have won several awards. She received a 1990 Awgie nomination and grants from the SA Department for the Arts in 1986, 1988 and 1994. On her return to Australia she formed her own company, Watermark, whose primary focus was to produce Blood Pressure, a play she wrote and directed, at the Lion Theatre in Nov-Dec 1992. Blood Pressure received initial writing funding through the Australia Council, and both Creative Development and production funding from SA Department of the Arts. In the same year she formed Round Tower Productions whose primary focus is film production. A Short Film About SNoRING (1997), her first film for 14 years, won Best New Female Director award at the 11th New Adelaide Film and Video Festival and has been shown at a number of national and international film festivals.

Gunzburg is also a highly qualified and serious astrologer. Since 1990 she has educated astrologers through Astro Logos, a part-time small business she runs with her partner. She edited Under Capricorn: An Anthology of Australian Astrology in 1989.