Pam Gems

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Standard Name: Gems, Pam
Birth Name: Iris Pamela Price
Nickname: Pam
Married Name: Iris Pamela Gems
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Sarah Daniels
SD 's plays have been staged around the world: in Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt have discussed her as an example of...
Occupation Ann Jellicoe
Those for whom she provided an early opportunity included Mary O'Malley ,
This dramatist should not be confused with the novelist whose married name was Mary Anne O'Malley, but who wrote as Ann Bridge ...
Textual Features Michelene Wandor
This includes work by Nora Bartlett , Sara Maitland , Judith Kazantzis , Wendy Mulford , Libby Houston , Cora Kaplan , Michèle Roberts , Angela Carter , Noel Greig , Rozsika Parker , Alison Hennegan
Textual Production Louise Page
At thirteen, profoundly affected by a Saturday matinee of John McGrath 's Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun and by the idea that theatre can change people's lives, she decided to be a playwright.
Page, Louise. “Tissue”. Plays by Women: Volume One, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1982, pp. 75-103.
103
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
MW edited the first volume in an influential series from Methuen : Plays by Women, in which she included work by Caryl Churchill , Pam Gems , and Louise Page along with her own play Aurora Leigh.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk, http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Michelene Wandor. http://www.mwandor.co.uk/, http://www.mwandor.co.uk/.
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
Also in 1973, before October, MW had a play produced as part of a season by women writers hosted by the Almost Free Theatre in London. All of the plays were directed and stage-managed...
Textual Production Michelene Wandor
Methuen 's drama catalogue for 1981-2 had listed seventy-five playwrights, only two of them women (as was pointed out by Mary Remnant , who succeeded to MW as editor after the next three volumes in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Michelene Wandor
The work deals with theatre and sexual politics since 1968, with an emphasis on alternative theatre groups such as the Women's Theatre Group , Gay Sweatshop , and Monstrous Regiment . The original version considers...

Timeline

11 October 1963
French singer Edith Piaf died, physically burned out at the age of forty-seven. Her friend the writer and artist Jean Cocteau died later the same day, after beginning to write an obituary for her.
September-November 2005
An exhibition at the National Theatre in London, Flogging the Jewels, celebrated thirty years of the company now called Sphinx (formerly the Women's Theatre Group).

Texts

Gems, Pam. “Afterword to ’Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi’”. Plays by Women: Volume One, edited by Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1982, pp. 71-3.
Gems, Pam. “Aunt Mary”. Plays by Women: Volume Three, edited by Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1984, pp. 13-46.
Gems, Pam. Camille. Samuel French, 1987.
Gems, Pam. Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi. Samuel French, 1977.
Gems, Pam. “Imagination and Gender”. On Gender and Writing, edited by Michelene Wandor, Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 148-51.
Gems, Pam. “Loving Women”. Three Plays, Penguin, 1985, pp. 155-17.
Gems, Pam. Marlene. Oberon Books, 1996.
Gems, Pam. Mrs. Frampton. Bloomsbury, 1989.
Gems, Pam. “Not in their name”. Guardian Unlimited.
Gems, Pam. Piaf. Amber Lane Press, 1979.
Gems, Pam. Plays One. Oberon, 2002.
Gems, Pam. “Putting on the Style”. Plays by Women: Volume Three, edited by Michelene Wandor and Michelene Wandor, Methuen, 1984, pp. 47-8.
Gems, Pam. Queen Christina. St Luke’s Press, 1982.
Gems, Pam. Stanley. Nick Hern Books, 1996.
Gems, Pam. The Snow Palace. Oberon Books, 1998.
Gems, Pam. Three Plays. Penguin, 1985.
Gems, Pam. “Whose play is it anyway?”. Guardian Unlimited.