Friederike Heller, born in Berlin in 1974, studied acting directing in Hamburg from 1996 to 2000, among others with Jürgen Flimm. She made her debut at the Staatschauspiel Dresden with Elementarteilchen, based on the novel by Michel Houellebecq. Since 2003, Friederike Heller has been directing regularly at Vienna's Burgtheater, e.g. Untertagblues by Peter Handke (2004), for which she was voted Young Director of the Year in the same year in the critics' poll of the magazine Theater heute. In the following years, she worked at various major theatres in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Hamburg and Stuttgart, among others. From 2009 to 2013 she worked continuously with the ensembles of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz and since 2000 with that of the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. Since 2009, she has frequently devoted herself to feminist themes and those concerning diversity in society. She also adapts novels: In addition to Elias Canetti's The Blinding, she has adapted Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Voltaire's Candide and F. M. Dostoyevsky's The Demons. Recent novel adaptations have been In His Early Childhood, a Garden by Christoph Hein and I love Dick by Chris Kraus. Her more recent work includes To Europe based on the novel Three Strong Women by Marie N'Diaye at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg..

Past roles: