Pat Birch

Pat Birch

Visiting Artist

In a career crossing all media, Director/choreographer Patricia Birch has earned two Emmy Awards and five Tony nominations. Other honors include Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Fred Astaire Award, and Theater Hall of Fame for her choreography and direction of music-driven projects ranging from Sondheim to the Rolling Stones.

Patricia Birch created the musical staging for the 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, Parade, Like Jazz, and LoveMusik, with Donna Murphy, Michael Cerveris; directed by Harold Prince.

Direction credits include: Celebrating Gershwin at BAM, On the Town with the London Symphony, the Melissa Manchester musical I Sent a Letter to My Love; Maurice Sendak and Carole King’s Really Rosie, Band in Berlin, a docu-musical re the Comedian Harmonists; the Cy Coleman musicals Exactly Like You, and Like Jazz. Now: Orphan Train a dramatic musical. Ms.Birch just choreographed a new version of Candide for New York City Opera.

With Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony: semi-staged productions of Le Rossignol, Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing and Let ’Em Eat Cake, as well as The Thomashefskys, a theater event played with symphonies across America and premiered on PBS. Her Jazz Symphony project with MTT at the New World Symphony was a huge hit and she will return shortly to work on a new multi media project with him.

Opera and music projects include The Mikado, Candide, and Street Scene for New York City Opera, The Mass for The Opera Company of Boston, and A Wedding by William Bolcom, Arnold Weinstein, and Robert Altman at the Chicago Lyric Opera.

Ms. Birch’s film credits include choreography for all musical sequences in Grease and direction as well as choreography on Grease 2. She has also staged musical sequences for many others including Big, Working Girl, Awakenings, Billy Bathgate, Roseland, The Wild Party, First Wives Club, The Human Stain (with sequences for Anthony Hopkins, Gary Sinise and Nicole Kidman)

For television, Ms. Birch staged all musical sequences for Boardwalk Empire and has before directed Natalie Cole: Unforgettable with Love, Celebrating Gershwin, and Dance in America. She was choreographer for The Electric Company and spent six years staging numbers for Gilda Radner, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and guest stars on Saturday Night Live and music videos for Cyndi Lauper, The Rolling Stones, Carly Simon, and the NBC Olympics.

Pat Birch trained at the School of American Ballet, and Martha Graham School. She danced with the Graham Company. St. Joan the Maid in Seraphic Dialogue was choreographed for her. Later, revivals for Agnes DeMille, and Anybody’s in West Side Story.