Apparatus, a new show by Katharina Schmitt, based on Franz Kafka's story In the Penal Colony, will see its Czech premiere on March 15th 2025 at Studio Hrdinů in Prague, where it will become part of the repertoire. A German premiere is planned for Autumn 2025 at JOiN/Staatsoper Stuttgart
Film shoot with kungfu practitioners for a first installment of ARCHE, a new opera project in development by Eugene Birman and Katharina Schmitt, with media dramaturgy by Oblique Sensations and comissioned in the framework of a research project by Jeffrey Shaw at the Academy of Visual Arts at Hongkong Baptist University concluded after three weeks on location and in a Hongkong blue screen studio in late 2023. ARCHE deals with the body as a living archive, with presence and movement and will finalise its first, interactive, module at HKBU in early 2025
INES, a new opera by composer Ondřej Adámek, libretto written and directed by Katharina Schmitt will premiere at Oper Köln in June 2024. An adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set after a nucelar catastrophe, INES explores relationships between voice and trauma in a composition for solo voices, choir and orchestra
Born is an old German word meaning fountain, well or source. Quelle (source) is also the name of Germany’s most successful post-war mail-order business. The company partially owed its wealth to the Aryanisation of Jewish companies during and after World War II, its business logistics were based on the principles of the war economy. From 1972 to 2006, Quelle used the Congress Hall on the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds as their warehouse.
Born is an installation, directed by Katharina Schmitt, in the spaces of the the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds, that connects a collage of texts from the first Quelle catalogue of the post-war period with a composition for spoken word and a classical singer by Christoph Wirth, a series of documentary interviews and new texts by Max Czollek. Born was developped as a comission for Schauspiel Nürnberg's Import/Export Festival and will premiere on June 14th, 2024
HAUCH, a sonic horror show created by composer Juliana Hodkinson, set designer and visual artist Marsha Ginsberg, and writer and director Katharina Schmitt will be shown as a video installation at the Los Angeles USC Fisher Museum of Art in the framework of Scene Shift, an exhibition on contemporary scenic design opening February 2, 2024
Caption (c) Marsha Ginsberg
Oblique Sensations are showing their VR-version of Katharina Schmitt's play The One-leggged Runner titled AUTO_NOMOS: Der einbeinige Läufer in the framework of RAUSCH 3 at Theater an der Ruhr Mülheim, starting MAR 3rd, 2024
The Last Chapter of the History of the World will see its German premiere in November 2023 at Theater Bremen in the framework of Festival Globale
Caption © Peter Fabo
The Last Chapter of the History of the World, a new show by Katharina Schmitt based on Heinrich von Kleist's essay On the Marionette Theatre, is scheduled to premiere in November 2022 at Studio Hrdinů in Prague
Caption © Peter Fabo
The radio version of Katharina Schmitt's and Michal Rataj's A Study of Aphasia was nominated for the 9th edition of the International Radio Drama Competition Grand Prix Nova, as well as for PRIX EUROPA 2021, and the UK International Audio Drama Competiton. The piece won the 2nd prize at Prix Bohemania. A Study of Aphasia is a binaural radio play about a singer, who loses her voice, inspired by a scene from Ingmar Bergman's film Persona, the opera Elektra by Richard Strauss and the work of voice therapy specialist Emil Fröschels. This introductory video explains the influences behind the piece, which is available online here
Caption © Lena Luga
HAUCH. Skin without body. Body without voice. Voice without breath. Breath without skin. HAUCH is a walk with clowns who appear as projection surfaces for social anxiety and fear. Composer Juliana Hodkinson, artist Marsha Ginsberg and director Katharina Schmitt follow the clown archetype from an amusing to a frightful figure via an exploration of contemporary post-dystopian and imaginary spaces. Questioning the voice as a fleeing anchor point of identity, HAUCH tickles contemporary social phobias, deserted urban environments and masked identities, confronting the voices of Neue Vocalsolisten with the bodies of dynamic performers remotely from the Hudson River Valley and live in the urban forest of the Tiergarten and rooftop terrace of HKW/Haus der Kulturen der Welt. HAUCH premieres in the framework of the festival The Disappearance of Music. The event on site was cancelled due to COVID-19, a film version of HAUCH launches on DEC 7th, 2020 on the website of Haus der Kulturen der Welt
The binaural radio play The Adelaide Carpenter Memory Wing - written and directed by Katharina Schmitt with music by Michal Rataj - will be presented in the framework of the Prague Festival of German Theatre in December 2019 at the Center for Contemporary Art DOX in Prague
Everything Goes to Plan, composed by Ondřej Adámek, written and directed by Katharina Schmitt, is now online as a radio broadcast by France Musique, who recorded the Strasbourg premiere of the piece
After a succesful premiere at the Munich Biennale in June 2018 Everything Goes to Plan, composed by Ondřej Adámek, written and directed by Katharina Schmitt, will be opening season 2019/20 at Gare du Nord, Basel and touring to Festival Musica, Strasbourg in October 2019
Caption © Ute Schendel
The Czech version of the radio play MOLYNEUX's PROBLEM, written and directed by Katharina Schmitt, is nominated for the radio drama award at Grand Prix Nova 2019/Bucharest
Molyneux's Problem, trailer from Katharina Schmitt on Vimeo.
Von der Idee zum Stück. Neue Formen der Musiktheaterproduktion. SRF Feauture on the Munich Biennale and the work on Everything Goes to Plan by Ondřej Adámek and Katharina Schmitt
Molyneux's Problem, written and directed by Katharina Schmitt
Performative installation for EIGEN+ART Lab with Jaschka Lämmert & Volker König and music by Michal Rataj. November 1st, 2nd and 3rd 2018 at EIGEN+ART Lab
Staging with Pavlina Štorková & Jakub Gottwald at Studio Hrdinů, premiere on December 11th 2018, further shows throughout season 2018/19 at Studio Hrdinů
Radio play on December 11th, 2018 on ČRo Vltava and on January 11th, 2019 on Deutschlandfunk Kultur
Caption © Peter Fabo
The Prague National Theatre has announced more dates for No Man, composed by Jiří Kadeřábek, libretto written/ directed by Katharina Schmitt, for season 2018/19: January 6th& 7th and March 18th& 19th, 2019
Caption © Markéta Magidová
Everything Goes to Plan, composed by Ondřej Adámek, libretto written/ directed by Katharina Schmitt, will premiere in June 2018 at the Marstall of the Residenztheater in Munich in the framework of the Munich Biennale
Caption © Armin Smailovic
A ČT 24 TV feature about the staging of Franz Kafka's A Report to an Academy at Studio Hrdinů, adapted and directed by Katharina Schmitt and scheduled to premiere in February 2018 in Prague
Caption © Peter Fabo
No Man, composed by Jiří Kadeřábek, libretto written/ directed by Katharina Schmitt, will premiere at the Opera of the Prague National Theatre in March 2017 with shows planned throughout season 2017/18 and a tour to Theater Bremen in Autumn 2017
Caption © Patrick Borecký
György Ligeti's operas Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures, conducted by Petr Kotík and directed by Katharina Schmitt, premiere in June 2016 at NODO Festival
Caption © Pavel Svoboda
Katharina Schmitt's staging of Not I by Samuel Beckett premieres in March 2014 at the Fairtrade Palace in Prague in coproduction with Studio Hrdinů
Video © Pavel Havrda
Together with set designer Marsha Ginsberg, Katharina Schmitt has been awarded a residency at the Watermill Center in Autumn 2012 to work on a performance of her play SAM, which was inspired by Tehching Hsieh's Cage Piece
Caption © Marsha Ginsberg