Katie Mitchell

Katie Mitchell, born in Reading in 1964, has directed over 100 productions in her impressive career. Her work includes text-based plays, operas and live cinema productions, a unique combination of video and theatre techniques.

From 1996 to 1998, Mitchell was director-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon; from 2000 to 2004, she was director-in-residence at the Royal Court Theatre in London. She has created productions at the Royal National Theatre since 1994 and became Associate Director there in 2003. She has staged productions at theatres including Schauspiel Köln, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, Vienna’s Burgtheater, the Dutch Opera Amsterdam, Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden and since 2013 on the regular at Deutsches SchauSpielHaus Hamburg. Her opera productions have been staged at the Welsh National Opera, the English National Opera, the Salzburg Festival, the Staatsoper Berlin and De Nederlandse Opera. She has also directed operas and plays in Dublin, Copenhagen, Milan, New York and Stockholm.

Mitchell received the Evening Standard Theatre Award for “The Phoenician Women” (Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon) in 1996. In 2009 Mitchell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to drama and in 2013, she received the Viennese Theatre Prize NESTROY for her production of “Reise durch die Nacht” based on Friederike Mayröcker (Schauspiel Köln, 2012). In 2019, she was awarded the International Opera Award.

Mitchell has already been invited to the Theatertreffen with four productions: 2009 with “Wunschkonzert” by Franz Xaver Kroetz (Schauspiel Köln), 2013 with “Reise durch die Nacht” by Friederike Mayröcker (Schauspiel Köln), 2020 with “Anatomie eines Suizids” by Alice Birch (Deutsches SchauSpielHaus Hamburg) and most recently with “Bernarda Albas Haus” by Alice Birch based on Federico García Lorca (Deutsches SchauSpielHaus Hamburg).