Katharina Schmitt is a director and playwright in theatre, opera and radio. Her stagings, opera libretti and plays have been performed internationally at theatres, opera houses and festivals including Oper Köln, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Munich Biennale, Gare du Nord Basel, Festival Musica Strasbourg, the Watermill Center and National Theatre Prague.
A focus point of Katharina Schmitt's artistic practice is the development of new operas as a director and librettist. Schmitt has collaborated closely with a range of contemporary composers, including Ondřej Adámek, Juliana Hodkinson, Michal Rataj and Jiří Kadeřábek. In 2017, she directed Kadeřábek's opera No Man for the Prague National Theatre, in 2018 she wrote the libretto and directed Everything Goes to Plan, a chamber opera by composer Ondřej Adámek, at the Munich Biennale. In 2018 she wrote the play Molyneux's Problem, which she staged, with a composition by Michal Rataj, as a radio play for ORF and Czech Radio, as a performance at the Berlin gallery EIGEN+ART Lab and as a theatre piece at Studio Hrdinů in Prague. In the summer of 2020, A Study of Aphasia, also developed with composer Michal Rataj, premiered, first as a radio play on Czech Radio, then as a music theatre piece at the NODO Festival in Ostrava. Together with composer Juliana Hodkinson and set designer Marsha Ginsberg, Schmitt created HAUCH, a sonic horror show, for Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2020. INES, a new opera Katharina Schmitt developed with composer Ondřej Adámek, premiered, directed by Schmitt, in June 2024 at Oper Köln.
Katharina Schmitt has received major accolades such as the Jakob-Michael-Reinhold-Lenz-Award for Playwrights for her play Knock Out, the Martha Saalfeld Award for Literature, an EHF 2010 Fellowship and an Alfred Döblin Scholarship from the Berlin Academy of Arts. Her plays have been translated into English, French, Polish, Finnish and Czech and are represented by Rowohlt Theaterverlag. Her radio plays have been produced and broadcast by Deutschlandradio, ORF, Český Rozhlas and WDR, among others, and have received nominations for Prix Europa, Prix Marulić and for Grand Prix Nova.
Schmitt, who was born in Bremen, studied directing at the Prague Academy of Arts, where she also completed a Ph.D. on the subject of iconoclasm and perspective in theatre. Since 2012, she has been one of the associate directors of the Prague theatre Studio Hrdinů.