About this Artist
PATRICIA BIRCH (Director) has earned two Emmy Awards and five Tony nominations in a career that crosses all media. Other honors include Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Barrymore, Billboard and MTV awards, as well as a Directors Guild nomination and the Fred Astaire Award for her choreography and direction of music-driven projects ranging from Sondheim to the Rolling Stones.
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 last season, LoveMusik, with Donna Murphy and Michael Cerveris, directed by Harold Prince.
Birch’s direction and choreography credits include Celebrating Gershwin at BAM and the televised concert production of On the Town with the London Symphony Orchestra, both with Michael Tilson Thomas. She worked with Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony on Le Rossignol and a double bill Of Thee I Sing/Let ’Em Eat Cake.
Opera and music projects include Salome, The Mikado, Candide, and Street Scene for New York City Opera; The Mass and The Balcony for The Opera Company of Boston, also presented at the Bolshoi Theater; and A Wedding by William Bolcom, Arnold Weinstein, and Robert Altman at the Chicago Lyric Opera.
Birch’s film credits include choreography for all musical sequences for Grease and direction as well on Grease 2. She has also staged musical sequences for Big, Working Girl, Sleeping with the Enemy, Stella, Awakenings, Billy Bathgate, Roseland, The Wild Party, First Wives Club, The Human Stain, and The Stepford Wives. For television, Birch has directed Natalie Cole: Unforgettable with Love and Celebrating Gershwin, both of which earned her Emmy Awards; Dance in America for the 20th anniversary of PBS’ Great Performances; and Natalie Cole’s Untraditional Traditional Christmas, featuring Elmo. She was a choreographer for The Electric Company and spent six years staging numbers for Gilda Radner, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, both Belushis, Dan Aykroyd, and many guest stars on Saturday Night Live.