Birgit Schreyer Duarte is a director, dramaturg and translator for the stage. She was born in Ulm, Germany, and attended an arts high school in Munich before studying Dramaturgy and Theatre at Munich's Bavarian Theatre Academy and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. During that time she first volunteered at the Bavarian State Theatre's dramaturgy department and at Munich's Opera at Gärtnerplatz as a directing intern.

After graduating Birgit spent a year in Canada, funded by a research grant from the Government of Canada, to conduct research in contemporary development of Canadian theatre and drama. She went on to complete a PhD in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, with a thesis on the notion of Canadian cultural identity as exemplified in current English-Canadian drama, while working as a freelance dramaturg in play development programs and workshops for independent companies in Toronto and Vancouver. Soon after, she also started to work as an assistant director, for Tapestry Opera, International Luminato Festival, and Canadian Stage.

Since 2009, Birgit has worked as a director, introducing seminal and new European work to Canadian audiences, starting out at the SummerWorks Performance Festival, the Storefront Theatre, and others. In 2016 she directed Hamlet at Toronto's Shakespeare in High Park and in 2019 Nathan the Wise at the Stratford Festival, both to critical and public acclaim. Since 2019/20 she has also returned to a European stage, first as an opera dramaturg and then as a director, at Vorarlberger Landestheater in Bregenz, Austria. Her production of Else (ohne Fräulein) won the STELLA*22, the Austrian Theatre Award for Outstanding Production for Young Audiences in 2022. Her multi-media, multi-disciplinary staging of Nora (A Doll’s House) opened in 2022 to rave reviews in Bregenz, followed by her contemporary musical production of Andersen’s The Snow Queen for a young audience. Birgit just opened her production of Strindberg’s Miss Julie in Bregenz, in which she offered a new interpretation that, according to a critic, “confidently [and] cleverly reprimands” Strindberg for his misogynist viewpoint.

From 2012 to 2019 Birgit was the Dramaturg and Artistic Associate at Canadian Stage, Canada's largest contemporary performance company, where she was involved in season planning, production dramaturgy and play development.

Birgit has also translated many German-language authors for Canadian stages, such as Nora Abdel-Maksoud, Lukas Bärfuss, Ewe Benbenek, Björn Bicker, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Marieluise Fleißer, Max Frisch, Nino Haratischwili, Philipp Löhle, Enis Maci, Maria Milisavljeviç, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Felicia Zeller, and others.

In the fall of 2024, Birgit’s German translation of asses.masses, a immersive Gaming Performance by Milton Lim and Patrick Blenkarn, had its premiere at HAU in Berlin, followed by its tour to Theater im Pumpenhaus in Münster.

She has been a guest director at York University (Metamorphoses; Peter Pan & The Sea Monstress) and Randolph College for the Performing Arts in Toronto (Noise; Life of Galileo) and an instructor at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, where she led a practice as research-based graduate lab.