Katharina Schmitt

Katharina Schmitt is a playwright and director, she was born in 1979 in Bremen. She currently lives in Berlin and in Prague. Schmitt studied directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and graduated in 2006. In 2006, she was awarded the Lenz-Award for playwrights; in recent years, her plays have been performed at prestigious German theaters (Thalia Theater Hamburg, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Schauspiel Leipzig, Schauspiel Stuttgart). In her directing practice, she focuses on work that emphasizes the connection between the visual and performance arts. She is an Associate Director of the Studio Hrdinů Theatre in Prague, which is situated in the Czech National Gallery. In the last few years, she has also started to work in the field of contemporary opera. In 2016, Schmitt directed the opening of the New Opera Days Ostrava, György Ligeti’s Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures. In 2017 she directed the opera No Man by Czech composer Jiří Kaderáběk, for which she also wrote the libretto, at the National Theater in Prague.