[BLANK]: (National Theatre Connections Edition) (Oberon Modern Plays)

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This will be the sixth year that the Orange Tree Theatre has taken part in NT Connections. Last year, our production of Zero for the Young Dudes! was selected to play in the Olivier at the National Theatre. Each ‘writer in residence’ runs workshops in prisons and with women at our studios, developing their skills and gaining understanding of women’s experiences of the criminal justice system.

Have her family politics affected her own? “I remember my stepdad calling me an armchair feminist when I was about 14, which made me really furious. He was probably right. I’ve tried to get out of the armchair.” It felt impossible, and that really appealed as a challenge,” says Birch, who is softly spoken, has a tattoo of a slice of watermelon on her wrist and is given to understatement. Now 33, she started out in theatre in her twenties but has branched out into television and film of late, making her debut with an award-winning screenplay for Lady Macbeth starring Florence Pugh in 2016, followed by a role as Story Editor on Succession. Her next, keenly awaited, project is a 12-part adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People for the BBC.Birch’s means may be modest (Revolt had a multi-casting cast of six), but her ideas are big. What fires her up? “Um, many things, I think. With Revolt I knew I wanted to say something quite loudly and also that I was pissed off. I was reading a lot of stuff that was making me angry. But as you start saying ‘angry play about feminism’, people get uncomfortable.” Another pause. “There’s sometimes a sense of telling people to catch up. But I don’t want to have a conversation about why we still need the word feminism.”

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.”

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’ Cavendish, Dominic (22 June 2014). "Midsummer Mischief, The Other Place at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, review". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 6 March 2020.

BLANK] is all about the connections between lives. Commissioned by Clean Break, a theatre company that works with women affected by the criminal justice system, it is a “modular play”. Alice Birch wrote 100 scenes, and directors are invited to choose their own adventure. There are no names in the script, so it is up to them to decide if the same characters recur across the narrative, or if the scenes fit together like jagged, unconnected shards.There are two key pillars of a Clean Break commission: that it must explore the criminalisation of women, and be performed by an all-women cast. At the Donmar, she is aware that the play will be seen largely by people like herself – a self-confessed “bleeding-heart liberal”. Does she think that theatre can effect change? “Not really, no. And I don’t think that’s what theatre is for. Hopefully there’s one audience member who feels changed in a profound way, but it’s a much longer process. Sometimes we look for immediate change, and that feels false, inauthentic and knee-jerk. I think there’s an arrogance that suggests that theatre can change the world. Taylor, Paul (16 June 2015). "We Want You To Watch, National Theatre, review: Extreme look at porn". The Independent. Archived from the original on 17 June 2015 . Retrieved 17 March 2020.

After the experimental fireworks of Revolt and We Want You to Watch, her Orange Tree play, Little Light, comes as a surprise. Though no less candid, it’s more domestic in scale, focusing on two sisters meeting for Sunday lunch (one sister seems on the verge of doing something ghastly with a carving knife) and coming to terms with a bitter secret from their past. Your adaptation of Dead Ringers , with Rachel Weisz, featured very visceral birth scenes, and your forthcoming film, The End We Start From , is about a mother ( Jodie Comer ) with a newborn navigating a climate disaster. What draws you to those extremes? Wurtzel, David (2019-11-18). "Theatre review: [BLANK] by Alice Birch". Counsel Magazine . Retrieved 2022-11-15. From the Archive: BushGreen meets Alice Birch". bushtheatre.co.uk. 3 November 2014 . Retrieved 23 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]

Normal People: First trailer released for BBC's Sally Rooney adaptation". The Irish Times. 17 January 2020 . Retrieved 6 March 2020. Despite these inconsistencies, Aberg’s [BLANK] still boasts plenty of excellent moments. Chief among these are three spellbinding scenes: “Carrier Bags” is between two foster children (Zaris-Angel Hator and Taya Tower, both brilliant), one of whom militantly divides up their room to keep their stuff separate. “Transference” depicts a mother (an enchantingly restrained Thusitha Jayasundera) who receives the news of her daughter’s prison suicide from a nervous social worker (Jemima Rooper). And finally, a magnificent, 45-minute “Dinner Party” scene—which is dazzling enough to be a play of its own—features the whole cast in its relentlessly acerbic takedown of liberal hypocrisy. Bowie-Sell, Daisy (1 June 2011). "Many Moons, Theatre503, London, review". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 17 March 2020. In 2016, Birch made her screenwriting debut with the film Lady Macbeth, based on Nikolai Leskov's novel Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District. [30] Birch made several changes from the novel, including setting the film in rural England. [31] Birch won a 2017 British Independent Film Award for best screenplay for Lady Macbeth. [32] Birch was also nominated for a BAFTA and for Best Debut Screenwriter at the British Independent Film Awards for Lady Macbeth. [33] [34]