Katrin Brack

Tuesday July 25th
Sala delle Colonne (Ca' Giustinian, Venice)
3:00 pm

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre has been awarded to German stage designer Katrin Brack.

Katrin Brack is one of the leading theatre set designers in Europe and beyond. Brack's sets are one of the finest examples of how scenography does not just involve an artificial object to be inhabited by the actors, but is a true dramaturgical contribution that participates actively in the development of the play, like the words in the text. It is the ideal synthesis between the words, the author, the director and the actors, the space and the spectators. For over a decade, Brack's descriptive stage writing has marked a new era in German and European theatre. It has been critical for the success of historic productions that have become part of the memory of theatre, by important directors such as Luk Perceval and Dimiter Gotscheff. The fundamental themes in Brack's work are air, light, time, themes that enhance the space of the stage and bring it to life, constantly in motion, adding performance value to the place that, thanks to the minor variations offered by the context, make it unique from one night to the next, as if the stage itself were acting and came to life as an actor, adding emotional and psychological content to expand the story told by the director.

Katrin Brack (Hamburg, 1958) studied set design at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf with Karl Kneidl from 1978 to 1984. She later served as an assistant to Karl-Ernst Hermann at the Schauspielhaus in Bochum and at the Wiener Burgtheater, when  Claus Peymann was the Intendant. Since 1985 she has worked as a stage designer in the following theatres: the Burgtheater in Vienna, Theatre de Vidy in Lausanne, NT in Ghent/Gand, Toneelgroep in Amsterdam; Deutschen Theater, Maxim-Gorki-Theater, Schaubühne and Volksbühne in Berlin; at the Deutschen Schauspielhaus and Thalia Theatre in Hamburg; the Kammerspielen in Hamburg and the Salzburger Festspielen. She has often worked with directors Dimiter Gotscheff and Luk Perceval, as well as with Armin Petras, Angela Richter and Johan Simons.

The Theatre Encounters in Berlin have featured several productions for the stage with set designs by Katrin Brack: Schlachten (2000), Traum im Herbst (2002), Kampf des Negers und der Hunde (2004), Iwanow (2006), Der Tartuffe(2007 ), John Gabriel Borkman (2016).

In a survey by the critics of the magazine “Theater Heute”, Katrin Brack was named “set designer of the year” in 2004 for Kampf des Negers und der Hunde, in 2005 for Iwanow and in 2007 for Der Tartuffe, all productions directed by Dimiter Gotscheff.

In 2006 she was awarded the "Der Faust" German theatre prize for the set design of Iwanow and in 2007 the Austrian "Nestroy" for Molière, eine Passion directed by Luk Perceval.

Since 2009 Katrin Brack has taught stage design at the Academy of Figurative Arts in Munich. She is a member of the German Academy of Performing Arts.