Pam Gems

Beautiful Marguerite Gautier, seduced at the age of fifteen by her Marquis employer, decides on a courtesan life. She meets Armand Duval, son of the Marquis, and the two fall desperately in love. Aware that she is in the initial stage of tuberculosis, Armand persuades her to settle in the country with him, but Marguerite is threatened by the Marquis and forced to return to Paris, dying and reviled by Armand.

A Play

Camille

'My loves, what are we to do? We don't do as they want any more, and they hate it. What are we to do?' Four determinedly 'liberated' – and very different – women ricochet around a tiny shared flat, while trying to pull together the shattered strands of their lives: Dusa is struggling to regain her children from their father, Fish is losing her lover to another woman, Stas is on the game to finance the course she wants to study at university, while Vi steadfastly refuses to eat.... A bitingly sardonic modern classic, widely regarded as an historic icon of early feminism, Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi was first seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1976 under the title Dead Fish, Michael Codron transferred the play to the West End under its new title where it enjoyed a huge success and established Pam Gems as a major new voice in British theatre.

Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi

Anton Chekhov

Brian Woolland

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14â€“18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended, and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. It will include writing in English from various genres and differing times. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov is translated by Pam Gems and edited by Brian Woolland, Department of Film and Drama, Reading University.

The Cherry Orchard

From the streets of Paris to worldwide fame Edith Gassion (known to all as 'Piaf', the sparrow) continues to be remembered and revered for her exceptional voice and extraordinary, troubled life. In this new version of Piaf, Pam Gems has reworked her classic 1978 play, vividly capturing the glamour and squalor, the rise and fall of this complex, fragile and enigmatic performer.

Piaf

Stanley Spencer is the wayward genius of modern British painting. Coming from humble origins, he never lost his 'rough edges' despite being taken up by the smart set. His stubborn championing of ordinary people and local places as suitable subjects for religious painting was revolutionary. His appetite for life was hugely attractive, though his attitude to women in general and his long-suffering wife in particular was deeply selfish: 'Why can't I have two wives if that's what I need?' Premiered at the Royal National Theatre with Antony Sher as Spencer, Stanley is a brilliant and painfully truthful re-creation of the man and his milieu.

Stanley

The Snow Palace is the story of Polish playwright Stanislawa Przybyszewska, a pathfinder and a brave, lonely woman, as she writes her great play The Danton Affair. She died in her thirties of hypothermia in her unheated hut.

Pam Gems

Books

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