Stage
While in the U.S. Army, Birney won an All Army Entertainment contest and received the "Barter Theatre Award" in 1965. Since the award was an equity contract with the Company for an entire season, he consequently spent the next season with the Barter Theatre, the State Theatre of Virginia, starring or appearing in fifteen shows, directing two others. In the following two years he went on to perform with a range of companies and productions, off-Broadway and in several regional repertory theatres. His New York debut was with Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival as Antipholus of Syracuse in William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
Birney worked continually in the theatre performing leading roles with some of the most important theatres in the country. His stage credits included starring roles on Broadway in Amadeus, Benefactors, and Man and Superman. He also had major roles at the American Shakespeare Festival, New York's Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, Washington, D.C.'s Shakespeare Theatre, Princeton's McCarter Theatre, the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, and numerous regional theatres around the country.
Representative roles included: Prince Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Richard III, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Orsino in Twelfth Night, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Jack Tanner in Man and Superman, Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World, Young Man in Summertree, Cusins in Major Barbara, Jerry in The Zoo Story, Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, Arthur in Camelot, Higgins in My Fair Lady, Matt Friedman in Talley's Folly, David in Social Security, Andrew in Love Letters, Jamie in A Moon for the Misbegotten, Victor in The Price, Jaques in As You Like It, the Dauphin in King John, and Shaw in Dear Liar.
