Alice Birch

Alice Birch (born 1986) 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 programme 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 recognising 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 was inspired by the housing crisis.

The play premiered in 2014 with Company Three.

Revolt premiered with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014 as part of Midsummer Mischief.

Birch was nominated for the 2014/15 Susan Smith Blackburn prize for writing Revolt and won the George Devine Award for Most Promising New Playwright.

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's play ''Revolt.

She Said.

Revolt Again.'' was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which gave her the prompt, "Well-behaved women seldom make history".

Birch wrote the play in three days.

The play was inspired by Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, though Birch took inspiration more from the power behind Solanas' words than from the messages of that work.

In 2015, Birch developed the play We Want You to Watch with the feminist theatre company RashDash.

We Want You to Watch was commissioned by the National Theatre.

The play protests the violent and graphic world created by pornography and raises the idea of getting rid of pornography in its entirety.

The same year, her play for children, The Lone Pine Club, premiered as a touring production.

Birch adapted the story from Malcolm Saville's children's books.

Birch's Ophelias Zimmer (Ophelia's Room, in English) premiered at the Schaubühne in Berlin in December 2015.

The play made its debut in England in early 2016 but was performed in German with English surtitles.

Ophelias Zimmer explores the character of Ophelia from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The play was a collaboration between Birch, director Katie Mitchell, and designer Chloe Lamford.

Ophelias Zimmer was nominated for the Friedrich-Luft Preis.

In 2016, Birch made her screenwriting debut with the film Lady Macbeth, based on Nikolai Leskov's novel Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District. Birch made several changes from the novel, including setting the film in rural England.

Birch won a 2017 British Independent Film Award for best screenplay for Lady Macbeth.

Birch was also nominated for a BAFTA and for Best Debut Screenwriter at the British Independent Film Awards for Lady Macbeth.