Dominik Flaschka & Roman Riklin

Dominik Flaschka & Roman Riklin
Dominik Flaschka & Roman Riklin
© BAK/Gneborg

Dominik Flaschka & Roman Riklin

Musicals that are entertaining and intelligent

Swiss Theatre Award 2017

Dominik Flaschka was born in St. Gallen in 1971. He initially trained as a dancer, before attending the Zurich drama academy (now part of the Zurich University of the Arts) from 1989 to 1993. After working at the Stadttheater in Lucerne, the Sommertheater Winterthur and the Theater am Hechtplatz in Zurich, he moved into directing in the mid-1990s. He has been director of the Theater am Hechtplatz since 2002. Opened in 1959 and subsidised by the City of Zurich, the small nostalgic theatre is one of the leading small stages in Switzerland. Roman Riklin, who was born in the same year as Flaschka and also comes from St. Gallen, first came to public attention in the early 1990s as the songwriter for the dialect rock band Mumpitz. He has composed countless music scores for the theatre, writes songs and texts for various Swiss cabaret artists, and is part of the cabaret pop trio Heinz de Specht, which was nominated for the Schweizer Kleinkunstpreis in 2016.

Roman Riklin and Dominik Flaschka achieved their greatest joint success to date with the dialect musical “Ewigi Liebi” (2007), which received the Prix Walo for Best Theatre Production that same year and by 2012 had been seen by 650,000 people. Switzerland’s most successful musical featuring the nation’s greatest hits is being revived in 2017 for its tenth anniversary. It was followed by “Avenue Q” (2011) at the Theater St. Gallen and a year later at the Nationaltheater Mannheim; “Monty Python’s Spamalot” (2013) and “Ost Side Story” (2015), both at the Theater am Hechtplatz, the last of which was nominated nine times for the German Musical Theater Award and garnered a Best Director award for Flaschka; and “Mein Name ist Eugen” (2016) which received seven nominations for the German Musical Theater Award. The duo are not afraid to serve up slapstick to a wide audience, bringing the delights of musical theatre to stages large and small, and combining content that appeals to young and old in a multidisciplinary display of musical pyrotechnics.

“When you venture into the Swiss musical scene, you inevitably come up against director Dominik Flaschka. A man who makes great theatre in a small space, and a master of intelligent boulevard, the NZZ called him. His works have been nominated several times for the German Musical Theater Award. That success is also partly down to the author, songwriter and composer Roman Riklin. For years now, the creative partnership that is Flaschka & Riklin has brought us surprising productions of high artistic quality and exciting content that take local themes and characteristics and transform them into witty, intelligent and entertaining musical theatre. So this award actually goes to the duo of Flaschka & Riklin.”

Heinz Gubler, jury member