{{Short description|English playwright and actress}} {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}} {{Use British English|date=December 2015}} '''Shelagh Stephenson''' is an English playwright and actress.
==Background and education== Stephenson was born in Tynemouth, Northumberland in 1955. She read drama at Manchester University.
==Career==
===Acting=== Stephenson worked as an actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in bit parts in television.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights|pages=466}} essay by Peter Billingham</ref> She appeared in ''Coronation Street'' in 1981 as the minor character Sandra Webb. She has subsequently had parts in ''Rumpole's Return'', ''Sapphire & Steel'', ''The Gentle Touch'', ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'', ''Boon'', ''Paradise Postponed'' and ''Big Deal''.
===Plays=== Stephenson's stage plays include ''The Memory of Water'' (1997), ''An Experiment with an Air Pump'', ''Ancient Lights'', ''Five Kinds of Silence'' (radio play 1996; stage play 2000), ''Mappa Mundi'' (2002), ''Harriet Martineau'' and ''The Long Road'' (2008) which was written in collaboration with the UK-based charity, The Forgiveness Project,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theforgivenessproject.com/projects/events/ |title=The Forgiveness Project - events }}</ref> to critical acclaim.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/may/26/theatre |title=The Long Road; The Guardian |work=The Guardian|date=26 May 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ft.com/content/b616c2a2-2682-11dd-9c95-000077b07658 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/j6dRc |archive-date=11 December 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=The Long Road, Soho Theatre, London |work=Financial Times|date=20 May 2008}}</ref>
Her plays frequently deal with new advances in science, such as the concept in the title of her first stage play, and include commentary on pseudoscientific fads such as urine therapy or phrenology as in her play on Harriet Martineau. Methuen Publishing Ltd published a collected edition of all four of these Stephenson plays in 2003.
''An Experiment with an Air Pump'' was revived in 2009 at Hampstead Theatre, where the original production appeared in 1998 after premiering at the Royal Exchange, Manchester; the play has been since been revived at the universities of San Diego and New Orleans, the English Theatre, Berlin, the University of Waterloo and the Giant Olive Theatre Company, in London. ''Harriet Martineau'' was performed by Live Theatre in November 2016.
===Radio=== In the late 1980s, Stephenson was a scriptwriter on BBC Radio 4's drama series ''Citizens''. Her original plays for BBC Radio include ''Lethal Cocktails'', 1989; ''Darling Peidi'', 1993; ''The Anatomical Venus'', 1994; ''Five Kinds of Silence'', 1996, which received the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Drama; ''Baby Blue'', 1998; ''Through a Glass, Darkly'', 2004; ''Life is a Dream'', 2004;'' Nemesis'', 2005; and ''The People’s Princess'', 2008. She is also the writer of an occasional therapy comedy series on Woman's Hour called ''How Does That Make You Feel?'', which began in 2010 and reached its 10th season in 2018.
A radio version of her stage play ''An Experiment with an Air Pump'' was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2001.
In 2002, she adapted Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse for BBC Radio 4.
Her play ''Broken English'' was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2020, and repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in January 2025.
===Film=== ''The Memory of Water'' was made into a film called ''Before You Go'' in 2002 starring Julie Walters and Tom Wilkinson and directed by Lewis Gilbert.
===TV=== Stephenson has writing credits for Downton Abbey, Season 1, Episode 4.
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0413772543 amazon.com: Stephenson Plays 1] *[http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/shelagh-stevenson.html Diversity site - Radio Drama] *[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0288623/ Before You Go (film)]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stephenson, Shelagh}} Category:Living people Category:English women dramatists and playwrights Category:20th-century English dramatists and playwrights Category:21st-century English dramatists and playwrights Category:21st-century English writers Category:20th-century English women writers Category:21st-century English women writers Category:People from Tynemouth Category:Actresses from Tyne and Wear Category:Alumni of the University of Manchester Category:English television actresses Category:20th-century English actresses Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Actors from the Metropolitan Borough of North Tyneside Category:Writers from Tyne and Wear