Experiment with an Air Pump Book

Shelagh Stephenson's daring and thoughtful new play

1799 - On the eve of a new century, the house buzzes with scientific experiments, furtive romance and farcical amateur dramatics. 1999 - In a world of scientific chaos, cloning and genetic engineering, the cellar of the same house reveals a dark secret buried for 200 years.

An Experiment with an Air Pump was joint recipient of the 1997 Margaret Ramsay Award and premiered at The Royal Exchange Theatre Company, Manchester in February 1997. Due for a major London production in autumn 1998. Her previous play The Memory of Water won the 1996 Writers' Guild Award for Best Original Radio Play and the 1997 Sony Award for Best Original Drama

NY Times

[AN EXPERIMENT WITH AN AIR PUMP addresses] such provocative concerns as the state of medical ethics, passion versus love, the evolving role of women and the aims of science at the dawning of eras nearly 200 years apart...Ms. Stephenson uses the turns of two centuries one heralding the birth of the Industrial Age, the other the age of biotechnology to juxtapose ethical quandaries, suggesting that while the machinery has evolved, human impulses have changed not one whit...