Pam Gems

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PG launched her playwrighting career in 1972 at the age of forty-seven. She went on to create a number of strong female roles, often recasting historical figures in unromanticized terms. In addition to her own twenty-plus plays, one of which she wrote for children, PG adapted and translated ten foreign plays, and wrote two novels and several television screenplays.
Black-and-white photo of Pam Gems, December 1979. She looks caught in a candid laugh, as if mid-sentence. She holds a cigarette in her right hand and is leaning forward behind the back of a chair.

Milestones

1 August 1925

Iris Pamela Price (later PG) was born at Bransgore in Hampshire (which is also in the New Forest), the eldest in her family.
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press.
158
Berney, Kathryn A., editor. Contemporary Women Dramatists. St. James Press.
87
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

1961

PG 's A Builder by Trade, one of her several early television screenplays, was produced and broadcast.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Burkman, Katherine H. “The Plays of Pam Gems: Personal/Political/Personal”. British and Irish Drama since 1960, edited by James Acheson, Macmillan; St Martin’s Press, pp. 190-01.
191

August 1976

PG 's all-woman play Dead Fish was first performed at Edinburgh'sKundry's Theatre for the Edinburgh Festival ; its title was subsequently changed to Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi.
Wandor, Michelene, editor. Plays by Women: Volume Three. Methuen.
49
Aston, Elaine. “Pam Gems: Body Politics and Biography”. The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, edited by Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, Cambridge University Press, pp. 157-73.
171
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press.
160

9 September 1977

The Royal Shakespeare Company first performed PG 's play Queen Christina, at their small Stratford theatre named The Other Place .
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press.
161
Wandor, Michelene, editor. Plays by Women: Volume Three. Methuen.
49

5 October 1978

PG 's play Piaf, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company , opened at The Other Place in Stratford.
Gems, Pam. Three Plays. Penguin.
9
Wandor, Michelene, editor. Plays by Women: Volume Three. Methuen.
49
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press.
161

4 October 2009

A rehearsed reading was given at the Drill Hall in London of PG 's Winterlove, about the relationship of Elisabeth of Austria and her cousin and lifelong friend Ludwig II of Bavaria .
“Past Events”. The Drill Hall.
Gardner, Lyn. “Obituaries. Pam Gems”. The Guardian, p. 34.
34

13 May 2011

PG died at St Mary's Hospital, Westminster in London at the age of eighty-five, of bronchopneumonia secondary to breast cancer.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

1 August 1925

Iris Pamela Price (later PG) was born at Bransgore in Hampshire (which is also in the New Forest), the eldest in her family.
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press.
158
Berney, Kathryn A., editor. Contemporary Women Dramatists. St. James Press.
87
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

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