Shelagh Stephenson playwright, was born in Northumberland and read drama at Manchester University. Her stage plays include The Memory of Water (1995), An Experiment with an Air Pump, Ancient Lights, Five Kinds of Silence (radio play 1996; stage play 2000)and Mappa Mundi 2002. Her plays frequently deal with new advances in science, such as the concept in the title of her first stage play, and including commentary on possibly pseudoscientific fads like urine therapy. Methuen Publishing Ltd published a collection of all four of these plays in 2003. Her plays for BBC Radio include Darling Peidi 1993; Five Kinds of Silence 1996 which was awarded the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Drama; Life is a Dream 2004; Nemesis 2005. 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.
