Katharina Schmitt

SAM is inspired by Tehching Hsieh's performance Cage Piece from 1978/79, in which Hsieh locked himself in a cage in his studio for the duration of one year. He was not allowed to talk, to read, to write, or to listen to radio or watch TV. A lawyer watched over the process and made sure Hsieh never left the cage. A friend came daily to bring food and take a single photograph of the performer, visitors were allowed to come to the studio for one afternoon every three weeks.

SAM uses the basic situation of Hsieh's Cage piece as a starting point for a performance; looking at the role and the work of the actor, it questions the relationship between performer, the audience and the audience's expectations. Katharina Schmitt will develop a performance installation (designed by Marsha Ginsberg) based on SAM. The text will be used as a blueprint, exploring the boundaries between more classical spoken performance and the factual physicality of the performer on stage. She intends to explore different ways of investigating the text spatially, as well as taking a close look at the question of the gaze (the gaze of the audience, the gaze of the actor, the internalized idea of gaze, of being looked at) as a starting point of performance.

Katharina Schmitt was born in Bremen in 1979. Between 2001 and 2006, she studied theatre directing at the Academy of Arts in Prague. Ever since, she has been writing texts for performances and directing plays at theatres in the Czech Republic and throughout the German-speaking parts of Europe.

In 2006, Katharina Schmitt received a writing fellowship from the Theaterhaus Jena and won the Lenz Award for her play Knock-out. In October 2007, she received an invitation to the Drama Workshop Days at the Burgtheater in Vienna. In 2010, her play Sam was presented at the Autorentheatertage of Deutsches Theater Berlin and she received a Writer's scholarship of the Akademie der Künste Berlin.
Her plays were so far staged in theatres in Jena, Stuttgart, Oldenburg, Leipzig, Berlin, Prague, Wiesbaden and Bielefeld. They have been translated into English, Czech and Polish. In her work as a director she focuses on contemporary plays as well as on work exploring the boundaries between classical theatre and performance.

Marsha Ginsberg is a set /costume designer, and installation artist. Collaborations with Katharina Schmitt: Jelinek's er nicht als er; Meetfactory, Prague; Knock Out,Theaterhaus Jena and Thalia Theater, Hamburg; Ginsberg developed the environment for David Levine's HABIT at Watermill Center, subsequent viewings; Mass MoCA, Toronto's Luminato Festival. Recent work in opera with directors Christopher Alden, Roy Rallo and Ken Rus Schmoll has been presented internationally: Theater Basel, Opera National de Bordeaux, Nationaltheater Weimar, Spoleto Festival, USA, Tanglewood, etc. Exhibits: Solo: "Pavlov’s Lab and other rooms" at Gallery Magnus Muller, Berlin; "Design Life Now" National Design Triennial, Cooper Hewitt Museum, ICA Boston, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Grants: NEA/TCG Design Fellowship; MacDowell Colony Fellowships. Education: MFA NYU Tisch School of the Art, Visual Arts at Whitney Independent Study Program; BFA Cooper Union.

Image: Tim Crouch - England, directed by Katharina Schmitt, Meetfactory Prague, photographer: Pavel Svoboda