She began her theatre career in 1979 as assistant director at the Schauspielhaus Bochum under artistic director Claus Peymann and in 1983 became press officer at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg under artistic directors Niels-Peter Rudolph and Peter Zadek. Three years later she came to Vienna with Claus Peymann as press officer of the Burgtheater, where she has lived and worked ever since. In 1993, artistic director Rudi Klausnitzer brought her to the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien as press spokeswoman and member of the management, until she joined Klaus Bachler at the Volksoper Wien in 1996 in the same functions.
In 1999 Bachler was entrusted with the directorship of the Burgtheater and Bergmann became its deputy director. In the last year of his ten-year directorship, Bergmann led the Burgtheater not nominally but de facto alone until the transition to Matthias Hartmann, as Bachler had already taken over the Bavarian State Opera, and remained until the 2009/2010 season. Most recently, Bergmann had organised the anniversary congress 125 years of the Vienna Burgtheater “Von welchem Theater träumen wir?” in October 2013.
On 19 March 2014, Karin Bergmann was appointed interim artistic director of the Burgtheater for the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons by Minister of Culture Josef Ostermayer. She succeeded Burgtheater director Matthias Hartmann, who was dismissed on 11 March 2014, and was the first female Burgtheater director. On 14 October 2014, Ostermayer announced Bergmann’s appointment as artistic director until 2019. Bergmann left the Burgtheater at the end of the 2018/2019 season.
Karin Bergmann has been in charge of the literature and theater departments at the Salzkammergut Festival in Gmunden since 2021. In her first season she already brought success to the cultural festival and “catapulted the Salzkammergut Festwochen right away into the top league of summer theaters,” wrote the Berliner Nachtkrititik. The second theater premiere, Shakespeare’s poetic magic fairy tale STURM, will premiere on July 15, 2023 in the Gmundner Stadttheater. For the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024, she is working on projects such as “Briefgeheimnisse interaktiv“, which involves local population and their stories in a participatory manner.
