Niki Flacks’ impressive career as director, actor, teacher, psychologist, spans both sides of the Atlantic. Productions directed in London include: The UK premier of Love in the Insecurity Zone (Hen and Chickens), Measure for Measure and Importance of Being Earnest (New Players), UK premiere Star Power (Landor), Anhouil’s Antigone, All in the Timing, Dysfunctional Families: The Stuff of Drama, Recipes for the New Millennium, Hecuba, The Bergman Project (An original theatrical montage based on Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Miss Julie and A Doll’s House), Hay Fever, The Children’s Hour, Three Sisters, (The Cockpit), Strindberg’s The Father, (The Courtyard West End), the world premier of Bernardo Stella’s Autumn Music (Pentameters), May Contain Nuts (Hen and Chickens), The Kindness of Strangers (The Landor), Shakespeare’s Pericles, with Stephen Beckett at Ludlow Castle in Wales. She directed two London premiers of Mike Folie’s plays, The Adjustment and Slave Shack, and another London premier of Richard Brockman’s Informed Consent. U.S. productions include: Most recently, Kithless in Paradise (The Lion, Broadway) The Women, Beauty Queen of Leenane, Absurd Person Singular, Old Times, Kindertransport, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Seagull, Three Divas, Naked by the River and The Tiger and the Typists.
As an actress she co-starred on Broadway in Private Lives (with Maggie Smith, directed by Sir John Gielgud), Candide (directed by Harold Prince), Dinner at Eight (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie) and Spokesong (directed by Kenneth Frankel). Flacks played leading roles at most of the major regional/repertory theatres in America: The Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, Yale Rep, Washington Arena Stage, Atlanta Alliance, Buffalo Arena, Dallas Theatre Center, Long Wharf Theatre, Hillberry Classic Theatre and Dallas Shakespeare Festival. Her musical tours and off-Broadway include: West Side Story (opposite Richard Chamberlain), Fiddler on the Roof (opposite Leonard Nimoy), Company, When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder? and Off the Wall (opposite Henry Winkler). On television she starred as the infamous Karen Woleck on One Life to Live, as well as many guest appearances on various series. Flacks’ films include: The Lathe of Heaven, Semi-tough, Murder in Texas, The Acorn People, Miriam and Raggedy Ann and Andy.
Flacks is a frequent tutor at the Actors Centre in London’s West End and at The Producers Club in New York. She was invited to Israel by the British Council to train both professional actors and promising student-actors. Her very popular workshops in Paris led to her being invited to be part of the prestigious faculty of European A.C.T. teaching actors in London, Paris and Berlin. She has been an assistant professor of theatre at Southern Methodist University and holds a B.S. from Northwestern University and an M.S.W. from The University of Texas at Arlington. She is author of the book, PowerTalk, Macmillan Publishing Co. and founder of The Bergerac Company, where she developed corporate training by combining theatre skills, psychology and neuroscience. Bergerac’s flagship program, PowerTalk, has been taught all over the world.
In early 2015, Niki’s book, Acting with Passion, detailing her innovative approach to actor training, will be released by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama Publishing.
“Niki’s work opens up a connection to a sort of internal reservoir.”