Biography:

Katrin Knappe was born in 1955 in Berlin. She studied at the Ernst Busch Academy for Performing Arts in Berlin. As a student, she played Gretchen in Goethe’s Urfaust (1979, Dir. Thomas Langhoff) to critical acclaim. Impressed by her performance, director Rainer Simon cast her as Boel in Jadup und Boel and in roles in his following films Das Luftschiff and Die Frau und der Fremde. From 1979 to 1990, Katrin Knappe was a member of the Volksbühne ensemble, where she worked with Frank Castorf, Helmut Straßburger, and Horst Hawemann. In the 1990s she also lent her voice to radio dramas. Knappe lives in Berlin, where she teaches speech and voice training at the Berlin School for Performing Arts.