Pam Gems (1925–2011)

Pam Gems was born Iris Pamela Price in Bransgore, Hampshire, England. She attended Brockenhurst County High School and served in the Women's Royal Navy Service (WRENS) towards the end of World War II. After the war, she read psychology at Manchester University. In 1949, she married Keith Gems, an architect, with whom she had four children. For two years she worked as a research assistant with the BBC, then began writing scripts for television. In 1970, she moved with her family to London, and discovered a demand for plays on social and political themes. She had her first big success with Dead Fish, or Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi, created for the Edinburgh Festival in 1976. Her biographical play Piaf, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978 before transferring to the West End and to Broadway. Other biographical plays include Queen Christina (1982) and Stanley (1996). She also created adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts (1994), Alexandre Dumas's Camille (The Other Place, 1984) and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1984) and The Seagull (1991).
She wrote nearly 50 plays during her career, many of them for fringe theaters.