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Michael Colgan (theatre director)
Encyclopedia
Michael Colgan is a film
and television producer
and is also the Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre
in Dublin.
, where, as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players. In 1983, he became Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre and prior to this, he was a director at the Abbey Theatre
, manager of the Irish Theatre Company and Artistic Director of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
In his 25 years at the Gate, he has produced many award-winning plays, including Salomé
directed by Steven Berkoff
, The Collection
starring Harold Pinter
, A Streetcar Named Desire
starring Frances McDormand
, The Home Place
starring Tom Courtenay
, Three Sisters
starring the three Cusack sisters, and recently Faith Healer
(which won a Tony Award
when it toured to Broadway
in 2006), starring Ralph Fiennes
. He has also produced four Pinter Festivals and five Beckett
festivals
.
The first Beckett Festival was produced at the Gate in 1991, in which the theatre presented all nineteen of Samuel Beckett
’s stage plays in Dublin over a three-week period. This festival was presented again at the Lincoln Center, New York
in 1996 and at the Barbican Centre
in London
in 1999. In April 2006, to mark the centenary of Beckett’s birth, the Gate produced a month-long festival which ran simultaneously in Dublin and at the Barbican in London and, in January 2007, presented the Beckett Season to acclaim at the Sydney Festival
where Michael Colgan directed Ralph Fiennes in a stage adaptation of Beckett’s novella
First Love
.
His productions of Beckett plays have also been seen in many cities throughout the world and at many festivals, from Chicago to Beijing and Melbourne to Toronto. The Pinter festivals were presented in Dublin in 1994 and 1997 with a major festival in New York in 2001. Most recently, in 2005, the Gate produced a festival to celebrate the writer’s 80th birthday, part of which was subsequently seen in London and in Turin.
Alongside his work for the theatre, Michael Colgan is also a film producer. He is co-founder and Executive Director of Little Bird Productions, a film and television company, which produced Troubles, a major two-part drama for LWT
in 1986. In 1993, he produced the RTÉ
television series Two Lives
.
In 1999, with Alan Moloney
, he formed Blue Angel Films specifically to produce the Beckett on Film
project in which all nineteen of Beckett’s plays were filmed using internationally-renowned directors and actors. The series won many awards including The South Bank Show award for Best Drama and, in the US, the prestigious Peabody Award. More recently, in 2006, he produced the film version of Harold Pinter’s play Celebration
for Channel 4
starring Michael Gambon
and Colin Firth
.
Michael is a Board Member of the Gate Theatre and the Dublin Theatre Festival. From 1989-94, he was a member of the Arts Council of Ireland
and he was Chairman of the St. Patrick's Festival
from 1996–99.
In 1996, he received the Eamonn Andrews Award for excellence in the National Entertainment Awards and in 1999 he won the People of the Year Award. In 1985 and 1987, he received the Sunday Independent Arts Award. In July 2000, he received the degree of Doctor in Laws (honoris causa) from Trinity College, Dublin. He was awarded the Irish Theatre Award for lifetime achievement in 2006 and, in 2007, was honoured with the title Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and in 2010 he was presented with an honarary OBE from Queen Elizabeth II.
He lives and works in Dublin and has three children.
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and television producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
and is also the Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...
in Dublin.
Life and work
Born in Dublin in 1950, he was educated at Trinity College, DublinTrinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
, where, as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players. In 1983, he became Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre and prior to this, he was a director at the Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
, manager of the Irish Theatre Company and Artistic Director of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
In his 25 years at the Gate, he has produced many award-winning plays, including Salomé
Salome (play)
Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde.The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published...
directed by Steven Berkoff
Steven Berkoff
Steven Berkoff is an English actor, writer and director. Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt...
, The Collection
The Collection
- Film :*The Collection , an upcoming American sequel film to The Collector- Music :*The Collection *The Collection *The Collection *The Collection...
starring Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...
starring Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand
Frances Louise McDormand is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996...
, The Home Place
The Home Place
The Home Place is a play written by Brian Friel that first premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin on 1 February 2005. After a sold-out season at the Gate it transferred to London's West End on 25 May 2005, where it won the 2005 Evening Standard Award for Best Play, and made its American premiere at...
starring Tom Courtenay
Tom Courtenay
Sir Thomas Daniel "Tom" Courtenay is an English actor who came to prominence in the early 1960s with a succession of films including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner , Billy Liar , and Dr. Zhivago . Since the mid-1960s he has been known primarily for his work in the theatre...
, Three Sisters
Three Sisters (play)
Three Sisters is a play by Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters, but most probably by the three Zimmermann sisters in Perm...
starring the three Cusack sisters, and recently Faith Healer
Faith Healer
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy.-Synopsis:...
(which won a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
when it toured to Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in 2006), starring Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor and film director. He has appeared in such films as The English Patient, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, The Duchess and Schindler's List....
. He has also produced four Pinter Festivals and five Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
festivals
Theatre festival
Theatre festivals amongst the earliest types of festival. Classical Greek theatre was associated with religious festivals dedicated to Dionysus. The medieval mystery plays were presented at the major Christian feasts...
.
The first Beckett Festival was produced at the Gate in 1991, in which the theatre presented all nineteen of Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
’s stage plays in Dublin over a three-week period. This festival was presented again at the Lincoln Center, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1996 and at the Barbican Centre
Barbican Centre
The Barbican Centre is the largest performing arts centre in Europe. Located in the City of London, England, the Centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1999. In April 2006, to mark the centenary of Beckett’s birth, the Gate produced a month-long festival which ran simultaneously in Dublin and at the Barbican in London and, in January 2007, presented the Beckett Season to acclaim at the Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival
Sydney Festival is Australia's largest and most attended annual cultural event running every January since it was first held in 1977. Its program features around 80 events including contemporary and classical music, dance, circus, drama, visual arts and artist talks...
where Michael Colgan directed Ralph Fiennes in a stage adaptation of Beckett’s novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
First Love
First Love
- Film :* First Love , a 1939 film starring Deanna Durbin* First Love , a 1970 Maximilian Schell film, based on the novella by Turgenev* First Love , a 1973 Indonesian film directed by Teguh Karya...
.
His productions of Beckett plays have also been seen in many cities throughout the world and at many festivals, from Chicago to Beijing and Melbourne to Toronto. The Pinter festivals were presented in Dublin in 1994 and 1997 with a major festival in New York in 2001. Most recently, in 2005, the Gate produced a festival to celebrate the writer’s 80th birthday, part of which was subsequently seen in London and in Turin.
Alongside his work for the theatre, Michael Colgan is also a film producer. He is co-founder and Executive Director of Little Bird Productions, a film and television company, which produced Troubles, a major two-part drama for LWT
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
in 1986. In 1993, he produced the RTÉ
RTE
RTÉ is the abbreviation for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the public broadcasting service of the Republic of Ireland.RTE may also refer to:* Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 25th Prime Minister of Turkey...
television series Two Lives
Two Lives
Vikram Seth’s second non-fiction work, Two Lives, is the story of a century and of a love affair across an ethnic divide. As the name suggests, it is a story of two extraordinary lives, that of his great uncle, Shanti Behari Seth, and of his German Jewish great aunt, Hennerle Gerda Caro.Two Lives...
.
In 1999, with Alan Moloney
Alan Moloney
Alan Moloney is an Irish film and television producer.In 2006 Moloney worked with Harold Pinter to produce a TV adaptation of the stage play Celebration. In 2007 he produced The Future Is Unwritten, directed by Julien Temple. In the same year he also produced The Escapist which premiered at the...
, he formed Blue Angel Films specifically to produce the Beckett on Film
Beckett on Film
Beckett on Film was a project aimed at making film versions of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett's stage plays, with the exception of the early and unperformed Eleutheria. This endeavour was successfully completed, with the first films being shown in 2001.The project was conceived by Michael Colgan,...
project in which all nineteen of Beckett’s plays were filmed using internationally-renowned directors and actors. The series won many awards including The South Bank Show award for Best Drama and, in the US, the prestigious Peabody Award. More recently, in 2006, he produced the film version of Harold Pinter’s play Celebration
Celebration (play)
Celebration is a play by British playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London.-Synopsis:...
for Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
starring Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon
Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...
and Colin Firth
Colin Firth
SirColin Andrew Firth, CBE is a British film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...
.
Michael is a Board Member of the Gate Theatre and the Dublin Theatre Festival. From 1989-94, he was a member of the Arts Council of Ireland
Arts Council of Ireland
The Arts Council of Ireland was founded in 1951 by the Government of Ireland to encourage interest in Irish art and channel to funding from the state to Irish artists and arts organisations...
and he was Chairman of the St. Patrick's Festival
St. Patrick's Festival
St. Patrick's Festival, Ireland, was established by the Government of Ireland in November 1995 and has since developed into a multi day celebration which takes place annually on and around March 17, St. Patrick's Day - the national holiday of Ireland....
from 1996–99.
In 1996, he received the Eamonn Andrews Award for excellence in the National Entertainment Awards and in 1999 he won the People of the Year Award. In 1985 and 1987, he received the Sunday Independent Arts Award. In July 2000, he received the degree of Doctor in Laws (honoris causa) from Trinity College, Dublin. He was awarded the Irish Theatre Award for lifetime achievement in 2006 and, in 2007, was honoured with the title Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and in 2010 he was presented with an honarary OBE from Queen Elizabeth II.
He lives and works in Dublin and has three children.
External links
- The Gate Theatre website
- Michael Colgan talks to Eamon Dunphy on RTÉ
- Interview with Colgan about Beckett
- Still Waiting for the real Michael Colgan — article in the Irish IndependentIrish IndependentThe Irish Independent is Ireland's largest-selling daily newspaper that is published in both compact and broadsheet formats. It is the flagship publication of Independent News & Media.-History:...
- Beckett on Film website