An Experiment with an Air Pump by Shelagh Stephenson

An Experiment with an Air Pump is a play written in 2000 by British playwright Shelagh Stephenson, inspired by the painting 'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump’, a 1768 oil-on-canvas by Joseph Wright of Derby.

1799 – The Age of Enlightenment and on the eve of a new century, a house buzzes with scientific experiments, furtive romance and farcical amateur dramatics.

1999 - In a world of scientific chaos, cloning and genetic engineering, the cellar of the same house reveals a dark secret buried for 200 years. Shelagh Stevenson’s An Experiment with an Air Pump is beautiful examination of what progress in medical science is and how we acquire knowledge and whether what is gained is worth the price paid.

It examines 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 200 years apart – the turns of two centuries – the birth of the industrial Age and the Age of Biotechnology, juxtaposing ethical quandaries, suggesting that while the machinery has evolved, human impulses have changed little.