About the Play:

An Experiment with an Air Pum has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Male Monologues.

An Experiment with an Air Pump is a full length drama by Shelagh Stephenson, which questions the basic principles of scientific (medical) research, such as the right of the scientist to cross ethical limits: the right to perform dissection on the recently deceased (1799) and use of embryos in stem-cell research (Present Day).

An Experiment with an Air Pump takes place in the same house in two different time periods divided by the gap of two hundred years. 1799 — On the eve of a new century, a Northern English house buzzes with scientific experiments, furtive romance, and farcical amateur dramatics. Present Day — In a world of scientific chaos and genetic engineering, the same house reveals a dark secret buried for 200 years.

An Experiment with an Air Pump premiered in 1998 at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and has since been staged by a number of other companies worldwide.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"[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…." — The New York Times

"…an impressive tapestry of complex issues…." — New York Daily News

About the Playwright:

Shelagh Stephenson is an Olivier award-winning English playwright. She was born in Northumberland and read drama at Manchester University. Her stage plays frequently deal with new advances in science, such as the concept in the title of The Memory of Water, which was made into a film starring Julie Walters, John Hannah, Patricia Hodge, Tom Wilkinson, Joanne Morley and Victoria Hamilton. She is also the author of several original radio plays written for BBC Radio, including Five Kinds of Silence which was adapted for the stage and won the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Drama.