Katja Kolm is an Austrian actress whose career spans theatre, film, and opera. Thanks to her innate versatility as a performer, Katja has had the pleasure of exploring a wide range of characters and challenging vocal parts over the years. By choosing her work carefully she ensures that she is able to balance her professional and family life. Most recently, one of the most exciting female composers of our time, British composer Rebecca Saunders, cast Katja Kolm in her latest opera. Katja will be the only actress to take on a lead speaking and singing role. The world première will take place in 2025 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin under the direction of the Dead Centre duo.
Katja Kolm was born in 1974 and raised in Salzburg, Austria. As a young child she sang and acted in operas and musicals and, as a teenager, performed in theatre productions by directors from Lithuania and Moscow. Aged 18, after graduating from high school, she spent a year in Moscow where she took acting lessons from Rosetta Nemtschinskaja at the GITIS, the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts. She also studied at the Russian Academy of Music, the Gnessin Institute, where she learned Russian and took singing lessons. She then moved to Berlin to study at the renowned Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, during which time she was cast in productions at the Maxim Gorki Theatre and Hebbel Theatre. From 1997 to 2000, she performed with the Tübingen State Theatre and the National Theatre Göttingen, where she worked with Falk Richter.
In 2000, Christoph Marthaler was named as the new artistic director of Schauspielhaus Zürich and Falk Richter became the new associate director, inviting Katja Kolm to join the newly created ensemble. In Zurich, she premiered her first own production bumsti! inspired by The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus.In 2005, Katja Kolm terminated her permanent contract with the Schauspielhaus Zürich in order to be able to organise her professional and family life independently. She went on to perform at the Volksbühne Berlin, the Münchner Kammerspielen, Schauspielhaus Wien, Volkstheater Wien, the Ruhr Triennale Festival, the Salzburg Festival, Vienna Festival and Lucerne Festival. A number of these stage productions were invited to international festivals such as d'Avignon, d'Automne Paris, Bitef Belgrade, Tokyo, Santiago de Chile, while national guest performances have taken her to the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the MaerzMusik Festival Berlin and the Mühlheimer Theatertage. Several of these productions were also invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen Festival.
Among the 50 or so theatre productions in which she always played important roles, include the Christoph Marthaler directed productions SCHUTZ VOR DER ZUKUNFT, O.T. EINE ERSATZPASSION, GESCHICHTEN AUS DEM WIENER WALD, LETZTE TAGE. EIN VORABEND, DAS GOLDENE ZEITALTER as well as DREI SCHWESTERN, HOMO FABER and EIN SOMMERN,ACHTSTRAUM directed by Stefan Pucher. In addition she performed in KLINIK directed by Falk Richter, DIE PRÄSIDENTINNEN directed by Miloš Lolic, and sang one of the leading roles in the opera I.Q. written by Enno Poppe with the famous orchestra Klangforum Wien, directed by Anna Viebrock. Katja Kolm has collaborated with the choreographer Meg Stuart, as well as with the directors Karin Henkel, Christiane Pohle, Stephan Müller, Robert Borgman, Volker Lösch, Andreas Kriegenburg and many others. Further Katja Kolm has appeared in many radio plays and readings, most notably with Ethan Hawke.
As on stage, her roles on screen are not limited to any particular genre. She received a best supporting actress nomination at the Austrian Film Awards for her performance of the historical role of Madame Paradis in the film LICHT (Mademoiselle Paradis) by Barbara Albert. She played the female lead Sonja in the Swiss film DER SOHN MEINES VATERS (FAMILY PRACTICE) by Jeshua Dreyfus, the murderer in DIE MÖRDERINNEN (THE MURDERES) a film by Pepe Danquart, and the evil Fräulein Rottweiler in the Swiss action comedy MAD HEIDI by Johannes Hartmann. Katja went on to star in Dani Levy's series DER SCHEICH (THE SHEIK), and has worked with film directors Hannu Salonen and Urs Egger, among others.