The most widely performed internationally are "Wild Flesh" (Диво месо), "Hi-Fi", "Flying on the Spot" (Лет во место), "Tattooed Souls" (Тетовирани души), "The Black Hole" (Црна дупка), "Chernodrinski Comes Back Home" (Чернодрински се враќа дома), "Sarajevo, an oratorio for the theatre", "Hotel Europa", and "The Demon of Debar Maalo" (Демонот од Дебар маало).
Goran Stefanovski was born on 27 April 1952 in Bitola, a town then in Yugoslavia, near the border with Greece on the Balkan Peninsula in Eastern Europe.
In 1979 he wrote his best-known play, Wild Flesh (Диво месо), which has had fifteen productions to date all over Europe, including London, and is on the secondary school curriculum in his homeland.
Two years later, Flying on the Spot (Лет во место) had its first production, a play which dealt with the fraught Macedonian Question of the late nineteenth century and the identity of the nation.
In 1988 The Black Hole (Црна дупка) received its first productions; with its unique structure and stunning theatricality, it was considered to be an important contribution to European theatre.
In 1987, Stefanovski wrote the first version of a screenplay for film director, Stolé Popov (Столе Попов), dealing with the aftermath of the catastrophic 1903 Ilinden Uprising against Ottoman rule.
In 1990, he took his family to Providence, Rhode Island, USA, where he spent six months as Outstanding Artist Fulbright Scholar at Brown University and began a lifelong friendship with Professor John Emigh.
The constantly deteriorating situation led his wife Pat to decide to make a new life for the family in Canterbury, England, from September 1992.
In 1992, Dragan Klaić, one of Goran's former teachers at the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts and a close friend, put him in touch with Chris Torch of the Jordcirkus theatre group in Stockholm, who commissioned a play, in cooperation with the Antwerp European Capital of Culture, about Sarajevo, the Bosnian city then undergoing a brutal siege.
This successful venture was followed by performance scripts for the festivals of European Capitals of Culture in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Avignon, and Bologna, all in collaboration with Chris Torch.
Several of his post-war plays "approach from different angles themes like alienation, wandering and home-longing, experimenting, at the same time, with the itinerant performance, aimed to explore a labyrinthine space".
This was to have led to a doctoral degree, but Stefanovski never completed it as creative writing came to hold a central position in his life and claimed the bulk of his time outside university teaching, which was his full-time career from 1978 onwards.
In the Spring semester of 1990, he was Fulbright Outstanding Artist Scholar at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, and taught an Introduction to Dramatic Writing in the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance there.
His A Little Book of Traps (a scriptwriting tool), published by Dramatic Institute in Stockholm in 2002, encapsulates his approach to playwriting and screenwriting as a craft which can be taught.
Goran Stefanovski's folders on each of his works with background material used and reviews, as well as much of his library of books, are held at the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences (МАНУ) in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia.
The Здружение Горан Стефановски Скопјe (Goran Stefanovski Foundation) protects and promotes his work internationally, as well as sponsoring aspiring young writers for the theatre and film and arts events.
Most of Goran Stefanovski's plays for the theatre were published in Macedonian in the four volumes of Собрани драми, Табернакул, Skopje ISBN 9989-937-21-4 (Книга прва – 2002: Јане Задрогаз, Диво месо, Лет во место, Хај-Фај, Дупло дно, Тетовирани души; ISBN 9989-937-22-2 (Книга втора – 2002: Црна дупка, Лонг плеј, Кула вавилонска, Чернодрински се враќа дома, Сараево, Баханалии, Kaзaбaлкан); ISBN 978-608-210-149-1 (Книга трета – 2010: Гоце, Екс-ју, Евроалиен, Хотел Eвропа, Жив чоек, Духот на слободата, Демонот од Дебар Mаало, Остави тоа!