Gate Theatre

Gate Theatre, repertory theatre in Dublin, established in 1928. The aim of Michéal MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards, who founded the company, was to provide an alternative to the Abbey Theatre, which at the time presented almost exclusively Irish writing. The Gate, which at first performed in the Peacock Theatre, a studio space belonging to the Abbey Theatre, was to present an international programme, with less emphasis on naturalism. Its first season included plays by the Scandinavian dramatist Henrik Ibsen and the American Eugene O’Neill, as well as Salomé by the Anglo-Irish Oscar Wilde. The Gate Theatre later moved to its own premises, within the 18th-century Rotunda Assembly Rooms, and its new building was named after the company. Although the company moved for a time to the Gaiety Theatre, it eventually moved back in to the newly renovated Gate Theatre building in 1971.

The Gate stages a full repertoire of international and Irish classics and new writing. Orson Welles performed in a number of productions there early in his career and director Adrian Noble staged a 1990 production of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. The first Beckett Festival, in which the Gate presented all 19 of Samuel Beckett’s stage plays, was produced in 1991 and was later repeated at the Lincoln Center, New York in 1996, and the Barbican in London in 1999. Touring productions have also visited Melbourne, Toronto, and the Spoleto Festival, Charleston. In 2000 a Gate production of Beckett's Krapp’s Last Tape starred John Hurt at the New Ambassadors Theatre in the West End. The Gate has also presented Irish premieres of Dublin Carol (2000) and Port Authority (2001) by Conor McPherson. The auditorium seats 370.