Amharclann an Gheata [1] | |
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  Gate Theatre Location within Central Dublin | |
| Former names | Dublin Gate Theatre |
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| Address | 1 Cavendish Row, Dublin, Ireland |
| Coordinates | 53°21′11″N6°15′44″W / 53.35306°N 6.26222°W |
| Public transit | Connolly station Luas Green Line: O'Connell Street Upper / Parnell |
| Owner | The Gate Theatre Trust [2] |
| Capacity | 371 [3] |
| Opened | 1928 |
The Gate Theatre is a theatre on Cavendish Row in Dublin, Ireland. It was founded in 1928.
The Gate Theatre was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir [4] with Daisy Bannard Cogley and Gearóid Ó Lochlainn. [5] During their first season, they presented seven plays, including Ibsen's Peer Gynt, O’Neill's The Hairy Ape and Wilde's Salomé. [6] They offered Dublin audiences an introduction to the world of European and American theatre as well as classics from the modern and Irish repertoire. [4] It was at the Gate that Orson Welles, James Mason, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Michael Gambon began their acting careers.
The company played for two seasons at the Peacock Theatre and then moved to the 18th Century Rotunda Annex - the ‘Upper Concert Hall’, the Gate's present home, with Goethe's Faust opening on 17 February 1930. [6]
The newly established Gate Theatre ran into financial difficulties and a meeting was called on 12 December 1930 to announce its closure. In a surprise announcement, Lord Longford offered to buy up the remaining shares, valued at £1,200 and the theatre was saved. Longford and his wife Lady (Christine) Longford worked with Edwards and MacLiammóir at the Gate until 1936, when a split occurred and two separate companies were formed which played at the Gate for six months each. The companies also toured for six months until the death of Lord Longford in 1961. [7]
During this period Edwards and MacLiammóir (Gate Theatre Productions) performed in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre and toured productions to Europe, Egypt and North America.
From the 1980s onwards the Gate, under the directorship of Michael Colgan, cemented its international relationship, touring plays around the world for audiences from Beijing to New York. The theatre established relationships with contemporary playwrights including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Brian Friel. In 1991 the first-ever Beckett Festival was produced, presenting all 19 stage plays over three weeks. The first-ever festival of Pinter's plays followed, along with many premieres and productions of Friel's work [6] including the production of Faith Healer with Ralph Fiennes which won a Tony Award on Broadway. [8] Among other firsts was the production of Chekhov's Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness with three real sisters, the award-winning Sinéad, Sorcha and Niamh Cusack. The production also featured the veteran star of Irish theatre and father of the three actresses, Cyril Cusack and the Oscar-nominated actress Lesley Manville. The production opened in March 1990 and transferred to the Royal Court Theatre in London later that year. [9]
With the support of funders, the fabric of the building was restored and renovated under the guidance of Ronnie Tallon and Scott, Tallon Walker Architects. [10] This included the provision of a new wing, which incorporated a studio space – The Gate Studio – for rehearsals and workshops.
The Gate Theatre is an old building having been completed around 1791. [11] It was not designed with wheelchair access as a priority. There is a wheelchair lift at the back of the building. [12]
Brian Patrick Friel was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company. He had been considered one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. He has been likened to an "Irish Chekhov" and described as "the universally accented voice of Ireland". His plays have been compared favourably to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams.
Hilton Edwards was an English-born Irish actor, lighting designer, and theatrical producer. He co-founded the Gate Theatre with his partner Micheál Mac Liammóir and two others, and has been referred to as the founder of Irish theatre. He was one of the most recognisable figures in the arts in 20th century Ireland.
Micheál Mac Liammóir was an actor, designer, dramatist, writer, and impresario in 20th-century Ireland. Though born in London to an English family with no Irish connections, he emigrated to Ireland in early adulthood, changed his name, invented an Irish ancestry, and remained based there for the rest of his life, successfully maintaining a fabricated identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.
Professor Frank McGuinness is an Irish writer. As well as his own plays, which include The Factory Girls, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Dolly West's Kitchen, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen, Garcia Lorca, and Strindberg to critical acclaim". He has also published six collections of poetry, and two novels. McGuinness was Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin (UCD) from 2007 to 2018.
Sinéad Moira Cusack is an Irish actress. Her first acting roles were at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, before moving to London in 1969 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has won the Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for her performance in Sebastian Barry's Our Lady of Sligo.
Anna Maria Manahan was an Irish stage, film and television actress.
Niamh Cusack is an Irish actress. Born to a family with deep roots in the performing arts, Cusack has been involved as a performer since a young age. She has served with the UK's two leading theatre companies, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre and has performed in a long line of major stage productions since the mid-1980s. She has made numerous appearances on television including a long-running role as Dr. Kate Rowan in the UK series Heartbeat (1992–1995) which made her a household name and favourite. She has often worked as a voice actress on radio, and her film credits include a starring role in In Love with Alma Cogan (2011).
Sorcha Cusack is an Irish television and stage actress. Her numerous television credits include playing the title role in Jane Eyre (1973), Casualty (1994–1997), Coronation Street (2008) and Father Brown (2013–2022).
Risteárd Cooper is an Irish actor, comedian, singer and writer and is one third of comedy trio Après Match.
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of the faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy. It was first produced in 1979.
Port Authority is a 2001 play by Conor McPherson.
Michael Colgan, OBE is an Irish film and television producer who is former director of the Gate Theatre in Dublin.
Patrick Bedford was an Irish stage and television actor.
Afterplay is a 2002 one-act play by Brian Friel. It centres on two characters from Chekhov meeting in Moscow in the 1920s.
Maureen Cusack was an Irish actress. She was born in 1920 in Glenties, County Donegal, Ireland as Mary Margaret Kiely. She was married to Irish actor Cyril Cusack and they had five children Sinéad, Sorcha, Niamh, Paul and Pádraig. Sinéad, Sorcha and Niamh are all actresses and Pádraig is a theatre producer. Her grandsons are actors Max Irons and Calam Lynch, and the politician Richard Boyd Barrett. Her granddaughter is the actress Megan Cusack.
Mary Manning Howe Adams was an Irish novelist, playwright and film critic.
Cathleen Delany was an Irish actress of stage and screen.
Betty Chancellor was an Irish actress.
Daisy "Toto" Bannard Cogley was a French-born Irish theatre actress, director, producer and designer. A socialist, she was active in the Irish War of Independence from 1917, and was interned during the Irish Civil War. She was an active figure on Dublin's theatrical scene for decades, as well as in Wexford and for a time London, launching multiple theatre and cabaret studios, and she was a co-founder of one of Dublin's main theatres, the Gate, of which she remained a director from 1928 to her death.
Máire Ní Shíthe was an Irish language writer and translator from West Cork.
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