Biography

Patricia Birch (stage director and choreographer) has earned two Emmy awards and five Tony nominations in a career that crosses all media. Other honors include the Fred Astaire Award, and  Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Barrymore, Billboard, and MTV awards, as well as a Directors Guild nomination. She was also honored as a mentor to Rosie’s Theater Kids. Ms. Birch has created the musical staging for original Broadway and off-Broadway shows, including Grease; You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; The Me Nobody Knows; A Little Night Music; Candide; Over Here; Diamond Studs; The Happy End; Pacific Overtures; They’re Playing Our Song; Gilda Radner, Live from New York; Zoot Suit; Rosa; Parade; Like Jazz; and LoveMusik. Her film and TV credits include Grease, Grease 2, Big, First Wives Club, Boardwalk Empire, and many more. She recently directed the off-Broadway debut of Sweetee, a new musical about a biracial woman in the Jim Crow era. Ms. Birch has collaborated with Michael Tilson Thomas in projects at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, London Symphony Orchestra, and at the New World Symphony. She worked with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony on Stravinsky’s The Nightingale,  a double bill of Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing and Let ’Em Eat Cake, and The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which played across the country and was featured on PBS’s Great Performances.

(June 2017)