Katharina Birch, born in Berlin in 1979, began studying theatre and musicology at the Free University of Berlin in 1998, but then worked mainly as an assistant director at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and Theater Freiburg, among others. During Tom Stromberg's directorship, she was engaged as an assistant director at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg from 2003. Her first own directing work at the Schauspielhaus (High Fidelity by Nick Hornby) was invited to the Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen. At the Schauspielhaus she created various sound installations, staged Pünktchen und Anton by Erich Kästner and worked on the co-production of Harper Regan at the Salzburg Festival.
In search of new theatre impulses, Katharina Birch moved abroad - to London. She lived in the UK for eight years, but moved back to Germany with her family shortly before and because of the Brexit referendum and has since worked additionally as a theatre pedagogical lecturer (for the Oldenburg State Theatre in Oldenburg and the TPZ in Lingen, among others). She regularly directs for various theatres in Germany (e.g. Staatstheater Hannover, Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, Hessisches Landestheater Marburg, Theater Osnabrück).
Current roles:
- Director in Die Schöne und das Biest