Sabine Auf der Heyde is a theatre director and educator, as well as a Social Justice and Diversity trainer. Her background has various multicultural components: born and raised in Hong Kong, she completed her schooling in Germany before moving to Beijing for language studies and then completed a theatre degree in directing at NYU`s Tisch School of the Arts in New York. Her family ties further extend to South Africa and Switzerland.

She moved to Berlin in 2002, where she directed productions in the independent scene and was an assistant director at the Deutsches Theater. She has been a freelance director for state theaters in Germany and Switzerland since 2009 and has worked at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, DNT Weimar, Staatstheater Mainz, Lucerne Theater, Staatsschauspiel Stuttgart and Bühnen Bern, among others.

Additionally, her interest in questions of power and Critical Theory led her to pursue a degree in Political Science at the F.U. Berlin from 2012-2019, with a focus on Gender, Postcolonialism and Social Justice. She has directed and taught at the Zürich Hochschule der Künste, Kunstuniversität Graz and Free University Berlin. She has been a professor of acting in an international BA program at Cours Florent Berlin and has been continuously teaching directing seminars at the Free University Berlin, in addition to providing Social Justice and Diversity trainings for various institutions of higher education.

Her work both in the theatre and in the classroom attempts to address questions of representation, inequality and intersecting areas of discrimination, and examines how the way we work in the performing arts can contribute to the continuously pressing questions of a more equal society moving forward, using theatrical means.