Bettina Kirmair was born in Dachau in 1987. Following her training as a media designer, she studied set and costume design from 2010 to 2017 in Prof. Katrin Brack’s class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where she also worked as an artistic assistant in 2016/17. During her studies, guest assistant roles took her to the Akademietheater in Vienna and the Münchner Kammerspiele. After graduating, she worked as a permanent set design assistant at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg during the 2017/18 season.

She has been living in Munich since the end of 2018 and works as a freelance set and costume designer in German-speaking countries both at home and abroad. Her projects have been realised at venues including the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, the Landestheater Niederösterreich, the Gessnerallee in Zurich and the Theaterhaus Jena. She has collaborated with directors including Stephanie van Batum, Lizzy Timmers, Susanne Frieling, Pina Bergemann, Babette Grube, Christine Umpfenbach, Asli Kişlal, Mikheil Charkviani, Lorenz Nolting, Sebastian Nübling and the collectives Wunderbaum, Post Paradies and #monike.

In the 2017 critics’ poll conducted by Theater heute, she was nominated in the category of Best Emerging Set Designer. For her graduation project Warten auf Romeo (Waiting for Romeo), she received a grant from the Brigitte and Ekkehard Grübler Foundation and won first prize in the national competition What is love? organised by the Kunsthalle Bremen in cooperation with Monopol magazine. The production Antigone by the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, to which she contributed the costume design, has been invited to the Radikal jung Festival in 2026.

Current roles: