Karin Henkel

Karin Henkel was born in Cologne in 1970 and grew up in Lübeck. She began her career as an Assistant Director at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, where she made her debut as a director in 1993 with Coline Serreau’s «Rabbit Rabbit». The same year she moved to the Burgtheater in Vienna run by Claus Peymann. Here she initially worked as Assistant Director to George Tabori, and then as a director from 1994. Since 1997 she has worked at almost all the major German theatres. Her productions include «Platonov» by Anton Chekhov (2006, Stuttgart State Theatre) «Minna von Barnhelm» by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (2007, Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg), «Amphitryon and His Double» by Heinrich von Kleist (2013, Schauspielhaus Zürich), «Dogville» after the film by Lars von Trier (2014, Schauspiel Frankfurt) and «Rose Bernd» by Gerhart Hauptmann (2017, Salzburg Festival/Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg). In 2018 Karin Henkel received her seventh invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen with «Beute Frauen Krieg» at Schauspielhaus Zürich. In 2006 she was awarded the Caroline Neuber Prize by the City of Leipzig and in 2018 she was awarded the Berlin Theatre Prize by the Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung. Karin Henkel uses her productions to look deep down into the darkness of the human soul, often creating disturbing images for profound works of world literature. If she had not become a theatre director, she would be working as a profiler, she claims. «Medea» after Euripides is her first work at the Residenztheater.