In Relative Good, David Gow grapples with the complex implications of the War on Terror, and the resulting sweeping changes to law that allow authorities to violate basic civil rights. Mohamed El Rafi is a Syrian-born Canadian engineer. He's arrested in New York's JFK airport, held without explanation, interrogated, and eventually forced to sign papers that facilitate his deportation to Syria. As Canadian government involvement only worsens El Rafi's predicament, his lawyer and wife team up in an attempt to gain his freedom in a world where, as one character says, "Sometimes the price of freedom is freedom itself." This incisive drama lays bare the absurdity of official policy, and the human cost of racial profiling.

David Gow is the author of five full-length stage plays, and an award winning internationally broadcast radio adaptation. His plays have seen productions across Canada with many of Canada’s most prestigious theatres (Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton), across the United States and increasingly around the world. In May of 2000, Gow’s play Cherry Docs, premiered at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre, starring David Strathairn. It was produced in Halifax and Montréal in 2003 and has also seen translation into Spanish, Hebrew and Polish and German. David’s other plays include The Friedman Family Fortune, produced at Centaur Theatre, and The Flight Of Peter Pumpkin-eater. Cherry Docs has been performed at several prestigious German theaters. Relative Good is David Gow’s most recent work for the stage and was staged in New York during 2007 with the title Arrivals.

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