Camilla Dina Smolders, born 1995 in Auckland, New Zealand, currently based in Vienna, Austria.
She is a multidisciplinary scenographer and stage designer operating at the intersection of physical performance spaces and digital architecture. By integrating real-time game engines and 3D animation into live environments, she transforms the stage into a fractured mirror of the contemporary zeitgeist. Her work is a dialogue between the hyper-modern, drawing from contemporary internet aesthetics, and the timeless, rooted deeply in the cadence of classical and modern poetry. By weaving together threads of contemporary pop culture and the rhythmic structures of poetry, she crafts environments that feel both startlingly futuristic and hauntingly familiar. Whether referencing the frantic energy of viral culture or the quiet intimacy of a sonnet, her work challenges the audience to question where the physical world ends and the digital imagination begins.
After studying Theatre, Film and Media Studies and Gender Studies under Nikolaus Müller Schöll and Lina Magdalanie at Goethe University Frankfurt a.M., as well as Stage and Film Design, she is currently pursuing a Masters in Theatre and Digitality and Experimental Game Cultures.
Since 2013, she has worked in various areas of theater and film, including as editorial assistant at the F°LAB Festival of Performing Arts (2017), as stage and costume assistant for Tanz and A Divine Comedy (2019&2021, choreography: Florentina Holzinger) and as a set designer for Der Soldat Monika (2024, director: Paul Poet). Most recently, she created an interactive gameplay at the Academy for Theater and Digitality in Dortmund that could be followed live on stage.
2026 P*enis, eine Umarmung R: Ines Hollinger
2025 GROUP A, Academy for Theatre and Digitality
2023 Der Soldat Monika. D: Paul Poet
EXHIBITIONS
2025 Back to Athens 12", International Art Meeting
2025, « The Division of Life – a review » (ATHENS)
2024 Yet Another Group Show, DTONLAGER
(VIENNA)
ASSISTANCE TO THE STAGE DESIGNER
2021 A Divine Comedy, D: Florentina Holzinger
2020 Die Odyssee, D: Jan-Philipp Stange
2019 TANZ, D: Florentina Holzinger
2017 F°LAB Festival for Performing Arts
EDUCATION
2025 - Experimental Game Cultures, MA. Univ. für Angewandte Kunst
2025 - Theatre and Digitality, MA. Academy for Theatre and Digitality
2017 - 2024 Stage and Filmdesign, Mag. Univ. für Angewandte Kunst
2014 - 2017 Theatre- Film and Media, BA. Goethe Univ. Frankfurt a.M.