Born in Malvern, Worcestershire, in 1986, Alice Birch is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter for film and TV. Her screenwriting debut was for the 2016 film Lady Macbeth, starring Florence Pugh; she then worked on HBO’s Succession, co-wrote the 2020 TV adaptation of Normal People with Sally Rooney and co-created the 2023 Amazon series Dead Ringers with its star, Rachel Weisz. Her adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, about a matriarch oppressing her daughters, opens at the National Theatre next month, and her new film, The End We Start From, directed by Mahalia Belo, is released in January. She lives in Hackney, London, with her partner, theatre director Sam Pritchard, and their two children.
When did you first come across Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba?
When I was doing A-level drama. There were far more girls in my class than boys, and we were looking at putting on a play. Our teacher suggested we read it, and it broke my heart. The plays that do that are the best plays.
