Mike Birbiglia

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Mike Birbiglia
Birbiglia in 2020
Mike Birbiglia
BornMichael Birbiglia
6/20/1978
BirthplaceShrewsbury, Massachusetts, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
OccupationComedian, actor, director, writer, producer
Known forSleepwalk with Me, Don't Think Twice, The Old Man and the Pool
EducationGeorgetown University (BA)
Children1
Websitebirbigs.com

Michael Birbiglia (born June 20, 1978) is an American comedian, actor, director, producer, and writer. Known for a confessional, story-driven style of stand-up, he has written and performed six full-length solo shows — Sleepwalk with Me, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, Thank God for Jokes, The New One, The Old Man and the Pool, and The Good Life — that have toured internationally and run on and off Broadway before being released as Netflix specials.[1][2] He wrote, directed, and starred in the feature films Sleepwalk with Me (2012) and Don't Think Twice (2016), and has held supporting roles in The Fault in Our Stars (2014), Trainwreck (2015), Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), and A Man Called Otto (2022). On television, he has appeared in Orange Is the New Black and Billions. He hosts the podcast Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out. Birbiglia is a frequent contributor to the public radio program This American Life, where his monologues about chronic sleepwalking provided the foundation for the project that became his signature work.[3]

Early life

Birbiglia was born on June 20, 1978, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, the youngest of four children in a Catholic family of Italian and Irish descent.[4][5] His father, Vincent Birbiglia, worked as a neurologist, and his mother, Mary Jean (née Patton), was a homemaker. Birbiglia has spoken in interviews and incorporated into his stage material the experience of growing up in a strict Catholic household and the influence both parents had on his outlook; his 2025 special The Good Life draws extensively from his relationship with his father, including his father's stroke.[6]

Birbiglia has discussed his Catholic upbringing, experiences with bullying as a child, and an awareness of mortality that he traces to childhood as recurring themes throughout his stand-up.[5] In a 2025 interview, he said his father initially discouraged his interest in comedy, hoping he would pursue a more conventional profession; their relationship and his father's eventual acceptance of his career has become a frequent subject in his work.[6]

Education

Birbiglia attended St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, to which he has periodically returned as a speaker.[7] He went on to Georgetown University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. While at Georgetown he began performing stand-up comedy at open-mic nights in the Washington, D.C., area, and he has credited that period with shaping his early voice as a comedian.[8] He has returned to Georgetown several times since for interviews and performances tied to his career.[8]

Career

Early stand-up

Birbiglia began performing stand-up in 1997 while a student at Georgetown.[8] After graduating he continued to develop material on the D.C. and New York club circuits, and built a national profile through appearances on late-night television, regular sets on satellite radio, and a recurring role as a contributor to This American Life.[3] His early albums established a conversational, autobiographical style — closer to monologue than to traditional joke-telling — that would become his trademark.[2] Paste Magazine, surveying his specials, described his work as a hybrid of stand-up and storytelling.[2]

Sleepwalk with Me

Birbiglia's breakthrough was Sleepwalk with Me, a solo theatrical show that drew on his experience with REM sleep behavior disorder, a condition that once caused him to jump through the second-story window of a hotel room. The piece premiered in New York in 2008 and ran off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theater, where it was directed by Seth Barrish. The New York Times reviewed the show favorably during its off-Broadway run.[9][10]

In 2010, Birbiglia adapted the show into a book, Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories, which reached The New York Times Best Seller list.[11][12] The book was a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor.[13]

Birbiglia co-wrote, directed, and starred in a film adaptation of Sleepwalk with Me (2012), produced in collaboration with Ira Glass of This American Life. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to screen at South by Southwest before its theatrical release.[14] It won the Best New Director Award at the Nantucket Film Festival.[15]

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend and subsequent solo shows

Birbiglia's second major solo show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, focused on his views of love and a near-fatal car accident he experienced. The production won the 2011 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show.[16] The show toured nationally and played a notable date at Carnegie Hall in June 2013.[17] A live recording of the show was released as a comedy album in 2013, and it appeared on year-end best-of lists in the comedy press.[18]

Thank God for Jokes followed, examining the function of humor and the consequences of telling jokes that offend. The New One, which premiered in 2018, recounted Birbiglia's reluctance to have a child and the changes that followed his daughter's birth. The Old Man and the Pool, which played a Broadway run, dealt with health, mortality, and Birbiglia's family history of heart problems; he discussed the show's development in detail in a 2022 interview while it was running at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.[19] Each of the six solo shows has been adapted into a Netflix special.[2]

His sixth solo show, The Good Life, was filmed at New York's Beacon Theatre and released on Netflix in 2025. The piece centers on fatherhood, mortality, and the stroke suffered by his father.[1][6] In an essay for The New York Times tied to the special's release, Birbiglia wrote about finding comedy in subjects such as his father's illness, and described how writing the show changed his understanding of his father's earlier resistance to his career choice.[6]

Film and television

In addition to writing and directing Sleepwalk with Me (2012), Birbiglia wrote, directed, and starred in Don't Think Twice (2016), a feature about a New York improv troupe. As an actor, he has appeared in The Fault in Our Stars (2014), Judd Apatow's Trainwreck (2015), Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), and A Man Called Otto (2022). On television, he has had recurring roles on Orange Is the New Black and Billions.[2] Splitsider reported in 2012 that Birbiglia was developing a second feature shortly after the release of Sleepwalk with Me, the project that would eventually become Don't Think Twice.[20]

Podcast and other work

Since 2020, Birbiglia has hosted Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out, a podcast in which he workshops new material with other comedians and creative figures. In a 2025 Wild Card conversation with Rachel Martin on NPR, Birbiglia discussed his philosophy of storytelling and the idea that "not every setup needs a punchline."[21] He has continued to record contributions to This American Life, which has aired excerpts of several of his stage shows.[3] Birbiglia has discussed in interviews his decision to keep partisan politics out of his stand-up, telling Vanity Fair in 2025 that he prefers material rooted in personal experience that audiences across the political spectrum can find common ground in.[1]

Personal life

Birbiglia is married to poet and writer Jennifer Hope Stein; the couple has one daughter, whose birth was the subject of his solo show The New One.[1][19] He has lived in Brooklyn, New York. Birbiglia has spoken openly about his health, including a rare form of bladder cancer he was diagnosed with as a young adult, his experience with REM sleep behavior disorder (which led to the hotel-window incident dramatized in Sleepwalk with Me), and a family history of heart disease that he addresses at length in The Old Man and the Pool.[19][9] In interviews tied to The Good Life, he has discussed caring for his father after a stroke and reflected on the lessons absorbed from both parents during his childhood.[6][5]

Recognition

My Girlfriend's Boyfriend won the 2011 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show.[16] The film adaptation of Sleepwalk with Me won the Best New Director Award at the 2012 Nantucket Film Festival.[15] Birbiglia's book Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories was a New York Times best seller and a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor.[11][13]

He has received Emmy nominations for his writing. Paste Magazine's career-spanning review described his catalog of specials as among the most consistent in contemporary stand-up, with each special "leveling up" the format he established in Sleepwalk with Me.[2] Flavorwire included his work in a list of the funniest stand-up specials of all time.[22] Press coverage of his Broadway run of The Old Man and the Pool and the 2025 release of The Good Life has emphasized his sustained move toward longer-form theatrical storytelling.[1][6]

Legacy

Birbiglia's combination of personal narrative, theatrical staging, and stand-up has been cited as part of a broader shift within American comedy toward solo shows that treat stand-up as a literary form. His decision to take Sleepwalk with Me off the comedy-club circuit and into off-Broadway and regional-theater venues — directed by Seth Barrish, with subsequent productions developed at theaters including Steppenwolf — helped establish a route by which stand-up comedians can present long-form theatrical work to mainstream audiences.[9][19] His collaborations with Ira Glass and This American Life have similarly contributed to the integration of confessional storytelling and stand-up in the American comedy landscape.[3]

Younger comedians have cited Birbiglia as an influence on their approach to storytelling. In an August 2025 Popsugar essay, the author quoted Birbiglia's remark to Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers — "Everyone good at anything tries hard" — as a guiding principle, an indication of his cultural presence beyond the world of stand-up.[23] His podcast Working It Out has further shaped his reputation as a craftsman willing to make the process of writing comedy visible to audiences.[21] Surveying his six specials in 2023, Paste described his catalog as one of the most consistent in modern American stand-up.[2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 RobinsonJoannaJoanna"Mike Birbiglia on Why He Veers Away From Politics in His Comedy, and His New Netflix Special".Vanity Fair.2025-05-22.https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/mike-birbiglia-the-good-life.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 "The Best of Mike Birbiglia: Ranking All His Stand-up Specials". 'Paste Magazine}'. 2023-03-06. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "Mike Birbiglia". 'This American Life}'. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  4. ↑ Jeffries, David. "Mike Birbiglia: Biography". 'AllMusic}'. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Mike Birbiglia admires his mom's 'Forrest Gump' energy".NPR.2025-05-22.https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/nx-s1-5406750/mike-birbiglia-comedy-good-life-catholic-bullying-mortality.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 BirbigliaMikeMike"Why I Find Comedy in Difficult Places. Like My Dad's Stroke.".The New York Times.2025-05-26.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/arts/television/mike-birbiglia-netflix-the-good-life.html.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  7. ↑ "St. Mark's School Calendar". 'St. Mark's School}'. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Considerate Comedy with Mike Birbiglia". 'The Georgetown Voice}'. 2010-10-07. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "Sleepwalk With Me — Theater Review".The New York Times.2008-11-14.http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/theater/reviews/14Slee.html.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  10. ↑ "For Cryin' Laughin' Out Loud".New York Post.2008-11-17.http://www.nypost.com/seven/11172008/entertainment/theater/for_cryin__laughin_out_loud_139094.htm.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "SLEEPWALK WITH ME And Other Painfully True Stories Hits NY Times Bestseller List". 'BroadwayWorld}'. 2010-10-21. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  12. ↑ "Political Bookworm: Mike Birbiglia".The Washington Post.2010.http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm/2010/10/post_7.html.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 "2011 Thurber Prize Finalists: Mike Birbiglia, David Rakoff and Rick Reilly". 'The Comic's Comic}'. 2011-08-22. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  14. ↑ "SXSW adds Seth MacFarlane, Bluegrass and more".Austin American-Statesman.2012-02-15.http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/austinmovies/entries/2012/02/15/sxsw_adds_seth_macfarlane_blue.html?cxntfid=blogs_austin_movie_blog.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me Wins Nantucket Film Festival Award". 'TheaterMania}'. 2012-06. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Chad Deity, Angels, Christian Borle, Laurie Metcalf Are Lortel Winners". 'Playbill}'. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  17. ↑ "Mike Birbiglia's My Girlfriend's Boyfriend Plays Carnegie Hall June 2". 'Playbill}'. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  18. ↑ "Laugh Button's Best Comedy Albums of 2013". 'The Laugh Button}'. 2013. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 "My worst moment: Mike Birbiglia and bombing on stage — not at comedy club but a country club".Chicago Tribune.2022-05-03.https://www.chicagotribune.com/2022/05/03/my-worst-moment-mike-birbiglia-and-bombing-on-stage-not-at-comedy-club-but-a-country-club/.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  20. ↑ "Birbiglia is Already Working on His Second Feature, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend". 'Splitsider}'. 2012-08. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 MartinRachelRachel"Mike Birbiglia doesn't think every setup needs a punchline".NPR.2025-05-22.https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1252898734.Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  22. ↑ "The 50 Funniest Stand-up Specials of All Time". 'Flavorwire}'. Retrieved 2026-06-08.
  23. ↑ "Step Aside, Type A: Why I'm Proud to Be a "Selective Try-Hard"". 'Popsugar}'. 2025-08-25. Retrieved 2026-06-08.

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