TV: Normal People (BBC / Element Pictures) adapted from the novel by Sally Rooney, Nominated for 4 Emmy Awards including Sally Rooney and Alice Birch for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series. Alice was also in the writers’ room as Story Editor for Season 2 of Succession (HBO). Costa, Maddy (23 May 2011). "Many Moons – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 17 March 2020. In 2019, Birch adapted Virginia Woolf's Orlando into German. The adaptation was performed at the Shaubühne and directed by Katie Mitchell. [48] [49] She writes in the dead of night – always has. “I don’t enjoy it, I find it painful and a bit torturous. I feel like psychologically I need to be quite far away from my child – and the rest of the world – but specifically him. There’s something about nighttime that you can be a bit braver. I really don’t look up when I’m writing, I don’t think about anyone’s response, nor an audience.”

Robert Boulter and Scarlett Brookes in the RSC’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again by Alice Birch. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/GuardianShe might have to get used to it: 2015 looks like being a big year. Yesterday one of her plays was announced as part of the new season at the National Theatre, Rufus Norris’s firs t. In a matter of weeks another of her scripts, Little Light, will go on stage at the small but influential Orange Tree theatre in west London. This production and the associated Take the Stage programme is supported by Sir John Cass’s Foundation. My sister and I were the only children there for a long time, and when all the adults ate together, we’d be sat at the table or under it, listening hard. There were pretty shared values there politically, but still lots of debate, conflict and drama. Dinner party scenes are still my favourite things to write. And I’d always be in a corner, reading. Tallerico, Brian. "The Wonder movie review & film summary (2022)". Roger Ebert . Retrieved 21 November 2022.

From the Archive: BushGreen meets Alice Birch". bushtheatre.co.uk. 3 November 2014 . Retrieved 23 March 2020. Jones, Alice (2019-10-16). "Alice Birch on her new play, writing Succession and adapting Normal People". inews.co.uk . Retrieved 2022-11-15. Cavendish, Dominic (18 May 2016). "Ophelias Zimmer at the Royal Court is a far-flung feminist take on Hamlet - review". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 17 March 2020. And for all that Birch herself is an unassuming presence – her voice so quiet I can sometimes hardly detect it on the tape – her plays are gloriously full-throated. She arrived on the scene aged 24 in 2011 with Many Moons, which explored with unsettling intimacy themes of child abuse in a bohemian north London borough. It was followed by Astronauts, co-written with a group of 16 to 19-year-olds, which laid into the bedroom tax and the pontifications of Boris Johnson with equal relish. with Jesse Armstrong, Jon Brown, Jonathan Glatzer, Cord Jefferson, Mary Laws, Lucy Prebble, Georgia Pritchett, Tony Roche, Gary Shteyngart, Susan Soon He Stanton, and Will TracyBirch grew up on a commune, Birchwood, in the Malvern Hills. She and her sister are named after it as her parents – both psychotherapists – weren’t married and didn’t want to give them two surnames (“I quite like that it comes from a communal property. It’s a nice, uncomplicated thing.”) She spent the first six years of her life in a large Victorian house with 15 adults, who lived, ate and tended the land together. “Very idyllic. I was just outside all the time and surrounded by grown-ups. I thought it was wonderful.” Bowie-Sell, Daisy (1 June 2011). "Many Moons, Theatre503, London, review". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 17 March 2020. A piece that gives impressive weight to the minutiae of chaotic lives while creating a panoramic sense of Britain today… delicious provocation from one of our most exciting playwrights’ a b Jones, Alice (16 October 2019). "Alice Birch on her new play, writing Succession and adapting Normal People". inews.co.uk . Retrieved 7 March 2020. Wurtzel, David (2019-11-18). "Theatre review: [BLANK] by Alice Birch". Counsel Magazine . Retrieved 2022-11-15.

In the 2000s we expanded the offer of short courses to create different pathways into the arts for students: from stage management to poetry, voice and singing, workshop skills, literacy and playwrighting. We also developed specialist courses in self-development, anger management, and wellbeing in recognition that these life skills were vital for Clean Break students to progress. By the late 2000s we were running 30 accredited and non-accredited courses for over 200 women per year. Many women studied with us over a period of years, progressing from short courses to longer term accredited courses. Birch co-wrote the play Astronauts with a group of 16-19 year olds who later performed the work. [1] Astronauts was inspired by the housing crisis. The play premiered in 2014 with Company Three. [15] Little Light is one of Birch's first plays, though it was not performed until 2015 when it premiered at the Orange Tree Theatre. [16] [17] As story editor on the dazzling second series of Succession, Birch was heavily involved in its deftly handled #MeToo storyline. The show’s creator Jesse Armstrong had admired Lady Macbeth and invited Birch for a cup of tea; she ended up joining the writers’ room in Brixton where she was one of five women with Lucy Prebble, Georgia Pritchett, Mary Laws and Susan Soon He Stanton. “It was the most wonderful job,” she says. “Such a funny room to be in.”

a b Mumford, Gwilym (11 December 2017). "God's Own Country and Lady Macbeth triumph at British independent film awards". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 6 March 2020. She finished Normal People earlier this year, having “hoovered” up the novel during one of her son’s sleepless periods, “so I found it really emotional.” She worked with Rooney on the series. “The job, I felt, was to make myself disappear as much as possible. It’s Sally Rooney’s beautiful work – how do you make that work on screen? It’s not Alice Birch’s interpretation of it, that would be a terrible idea.” BLANK ] will be performed on the opening night of the National Theatre Connections Festival, Tuesday 26 June, in the Dorfman Theatre by See&Eye Theatre. She says her father always knew she was going to be a writer, perhaps because, aged 7, she wrote her first pantomime and forced her friends to be in it. “Horrible child! It’s the only thing I can really remember wanting to do. I was good at playing on my own – I used to line pens up and talk to them.”

Birch adapted Graham Swift's 2016 novel Mothering Sunday. The film of the same name premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. [62] [63] In August 2020, it was announced that Birch would write the television reimagining of Dead Ringers, set to star Rachel Weisz. [64]

a b c Hoggard, Liz (4 June 2017). "Alice Birch: 'I'm interested in whether trauma can be passed on through DNA' ". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved 17 March 2020.