[1] Till he reached the age of around 20, as he much later told Beatrice von Matt, Werner Düggelin had never been inside a theatre.

His first visit was to the Zürich Playhouse sitting in a box high up on the right side of the auditorium, he experienced what he described as a "coup de foudre"".

It was Werner Düggelin who had translated the text from Beckett's English language original, and he then worked on it as Blin's production assistant.

Along with playwrights already mentioned, Düggelin has been among the first to stage German production of works by Eugène Ionesco, Georges Schehadé, Albert Camus, Jean Genet and Paul Claudel.

[1] Over the next few years he guested as a stage director at some of the most important theatres in the German-speaking world, notably in Basel, Vienna and Stuttgart.

[1] It was also in 1963 that he exchanged his freelance status for a permanent position as stage director at the Zürich Playhouse, still under the overall direction of his mentor and the man who had helped him break into the world of theatre more than ten years earlier, Leopold Lindtberg.

[9][b] His predecessor, Otto Ceresa, had been a part-time director who had combined his duties with his principal job as a senior manager at Pro Helvetia.

[1][10] A number of tribute pieces published in celebration of Düggelin's ninetieth birthday made the point that, despite his advanced age, he was still working at the profession he loved, his ear for the dramatists' true intent more acutely tuned than ever.

Some of his best recalled small-screen adaptations and productions included "L'Histoire du soldat" (1975) by Ramuz, "The Black Spider" (1986) by Gotthelf and a "Hommage to Tinguely" (1989).

[1] Swiss artists with whom he worked include Jean Tinguely, Eva Aeppli, Bernhard Luginbühl and Schang Hutter.