About the Gate Theatre

About the Gate Theatre

The Gate Theatre has been, artistically and architecturally, a landmark building for over 250 years. Established as a theatre company in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir, the Gate offered Dublin audiences an introduction to the world of European and American theatre and also to classics from the modern and Irish repertoire. It was with the Gate that Orson Welles, James Mason and Michael Gambon began their prodigious acting careers.

The second Artistic Directorship of the Gate Theatre began in 1983 when Michael Colgan took over. In 1991, the Gate became the first theatre in the world to present a full retrospective of the nineteen stage plays of Samuel Beckett. This festival was repeated at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival and at the Barbican Centre in London. The Gate also played a major role in the Beckett Centenary Festival, in partnership with Dublin’s leading cultural and academic institutions under the auspices of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. In 2007, the Gate toured a critically acclaimed season, entitled GATE | BECKETT, to the Sydney Festival and, the following year, toured it to Lincoln Center Festival in New York, starring Ralph Fiennes, Barry McGovern and Liam Neeson. In 2008, the Gate completed an historic tour with its landmark production of Waiting for Godot which sold out 40 venues throughout the country in the first ever all-Ireland 32 county tour. 

In 2017, Selina Cartmell was appointed Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre. An award-winning director, who had worked extensively in Dublin and the U.K., Cartmell’s inaugural season at the Gate opened on 12th July 2017 with the immersive production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Read more.