Alice Birch
Biography
Alice Birch is a British playwright and screenwriter. Birch has written several plays, including Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. for which she was awarded the George Devine Award for Most Promising New Playwright, and Anatomy of a Suicide for which she won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Birch was also the screenwriter for the film Lady Macbeth and has written for such television shows as Succession, Normal People, and Dead Ringers.
Birch spent the first five years of her life living with her family at a commune. Because her parents were unmarried, they decided to give Alice and her sister the last name Birch after the commune's name, Birchwood Hall.
At 18, Birch joined the Royal Court Theatre’s young writers program and spent a three-month unpaid internship in Los Angeles working for the film production company BenderSpink.
Birch attended Exeter University for her undergraduate degree.
In 2010, Birch participated in 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic in which writers, directors, actors, and other creatives have 24 hours to create a new play before it is performed.
The playwrights were given 6 hours to write a play 15 minutes in length. Birch's play was called And Then There Were Four Little Beats of Four Little Hearts on the Edge of the World.
Birch's first performed full-length play was Many Moons, which premiered in 2011 at Theatre 503 under the direction of Derek Bond. The play follows four characters whose lives seem separate, but then collide.
Birch was nominated for the 2011/12 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an award recognizing female playwrights writing in the English language, for Many Moons.
In 2013, Birch's episode of the radio comedy Absolutely Delish was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Also in 2013, Birch's play Little on the Inside premiered at Latitude Festival. The play is set inside a women's prison.
Birch co-wrote the play Astronauts with a group of 16-19-year-olds who later performed the work. Astronauts were inspired by the housing crisis.
The play premiered in 2014 with Company Three. Little Light is one of Birch's first plays, though it was not performed until 2015 when it premiered at the Orange Tree Theatre.
Birch adapted Graham Swift's 2016 novel Mothering Sunday. The film of the same name premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. In August 2020, it was announced that Birch would write the television reimagining of Dead Ringers, set to star Rachel Weisz.
In 2022, The Wonder, for which Birch co-wrote the screenplay with Sebastián Lelio and Emma Donoghue, adapted from Donoghue's novel of the same name, premiered.
