'I think I've the best job in the world,' says Michael Colgan, now 25 years at the helm of the Gate theatre - 'my mistress, my lover, my wife, my darling'
'I'VE ALWAYS BEEN quite persuasive," Michael Colgan says with a characteristic lack of modesty as he recounts how he convinced a nurse to let him in to visit theatre legend and Gate founding father Hilton Edwards as he lay on his deathbed in a Dublin hospital. "I sat with him for about an hour," recalls Colgan, who says the following morning he was woken by a telephone call telling him Edwards had died the previous night, presumably not long after his unexpected visit.
"I nearly dropped the phone," says this Dubliner who has built an entire career in drama. "I've worked out that it was maybe because I was with him then, that I went for the job." The job in question was director of the Gate theatre, a position Colgan has held for 25 years this year, a year in which the theatre itself also celebrates its 80th birthday.
"It's a lot of numbers this year," admits Colgan, easing back into the sofa of a private members club on St Stephen's Green and recalling the interview, when he was aged 32, that resulted in him taking over the job previously held by Edwards and his legendary partner Micheál MacLíammóir.
"They were offering me a three-year contract," he explains, adding that he didn't want it. "They said, 'We might be able to go to four'. And the arrogance of this 32-year-old, I said, 'You're going in the wrong direction, pal.'"Colgan's recollection of this back and forth between an upstart young Trinity graduate, who was director of the Dublin Theatre Festival at the time, and the board of the Gate theatre, says a lot. In the presence of this charismatic, often openly vainglorious 58-year-old, it's easy to see the young man who faced his interviewers with such exaggerated self-importance. "I said, 'If you're fed up with me, if the majority of the board want to get rid of me, I'll go. If I get fed up with you, I'll also go. So if you want me to stay, don't annoy me.'"
In the intervening 25 years, the board members have clearly succeeded in avoiding ruffling Colgan's feathers as he has remained the Gate's artistic director ever since, and he now counts them among his greatest confidantes. Yet the young man they chose to take charge of one of the country's most revered institutions in 1983 had only one immediate goal - to fill seats.
"Very early on, somebody asked me, 'What's your policy?'" says Colgan. "I said, 'I don't have one, except to pack [the theatre], and I can start doing it with the least possible bad taste as time goes on. I really want full houses.'" It worked. With his first three shows, When the Saints Go Cycling In by Hugh Leonard, Taking Steps by Alan Ayckbourn and Wilde's A Woman of No Importance starring Niamh Cusack, he managed to fill the theatre every night.
"I did 157 full houses in a row," he recalls proudly. It's an ambition that he has pursued with singular focus and which has earned him accusations of commercialism, but Colgan makes no apologies. "It should be full, not for me and my vanity, or not because we need the money, but for the unfortunate, vulnerable, naked, worrying, getting sick before a performance, nervous, knee-knocking performers."
With the Gate's audiences now at 95 per cent over the year, it would seem that Colgan has done what he set out to do when he took on the prestigious post. "But I think I haven't finished it," he insists with an eagerness and energy that appears undampened by the years in-between. Yet Colgan is the first to admit that he is not the same man who took over the Gate all those years ago. "You just become a different person in 25 years."
DURING THIS TIME, HE HAS CHARMED and alienated in almost equal measure. What becomes clear over my time in his company, however, is that whatever changes he professes, Colgan's personal appeal remains constant. Over the course of our interview he is approached by several people eager for his attention, among them a middle-aged woman who asks him outright for a hug.
It's a charm that Colgan has clearly used to his advantage, a gift that came in handy when it came to looking for donors to help finance a new wing for the Gate theatre due to open later this year. To add to the Government funds, Colgan convinced dozens of private individuals to stump up €50,000 each towards the construction of this additional space.
The expansion will usher in a new era for the 80-year-old theatre, yet Colgan is aware that more has to change than the physical space. "All over the world, our imaginations are changing," he says, pointing to the pervasive influence of reality TV, which blurs the line between audience and performer.
"We have an audience now who are no longer looking at an actor in awe because that actor has the courage to go and perform in front of people . . . people are themselves more confident, and I believe that their imaginations, their minds are working, maybe not as deeply but they're certainly moving much more quickly."
The solution to this changing dynamic is, according to Colgan, to widen the gap between performer and audience, with the onus on producers like himself to react to societal changes. "I think we have a great job to do," he says, clearly relishing the task. "I think theatres could be the new cathedrals. People need to have a shared experience."
Colgan leans forward, as if ready to build these new places of worship with his own bare hands. Yet after more than three decades in theatre, and a quarter of a century at the helm of the Gate, does he still have the energy to take it into this new era? "The fire in my belly to run the theatre is raging furiously at this moment, more furiously than any other time in the 25 years," he says with a conviction that brooks no argument.
He clearly has no intention of giving up his long-held post. "I think it's the best job in the world," he explains simply. "I haven't come across a job, and I'm 58 years of age, that I'd prefer." Such is his passion for a theatre he calls "my mistress, my lover, my wife, my darling" that Colgan swears he is ready to defend her from all attackers. "At the end of the day, I can see myself doing 'Ma, I'm on top of the world' on the roof of the Gate when everybody else has left me," he says, quoting the Jimmy Cagney line from White Heat.
So who are the enemies at the Gate? "My biggest worry is not the recession, my biggest worry is the ecology of Irish theatre and I think the Arts Council has actually damaged the ecology."
While making it clear that he supports the Abbey Theatre and has great admiration for its director, Fiach Mac Conghail, Colgan is clearly incensed at the Arts Council's announcement this year of €30.2 million in funding for the national theatre over three years. "I think giving €10 million to the Abbey [a year] and less than a million to Druid is absolutely nonsensical and reprehensible," he says. "It's great that the Abbey has got thirty million for three years . . . but do it in a situation where all boats are rising reasonably at the same level."
There's little doubt that the Gate's boat is rising, boasting three successful, concurrent shows as this article goes to print: Brian Friel's new version of Hedda Gabler, the acclaimed national tour of Waiting for Godot and a Gate production of Pinter's No Man's Land, starring Michael Gambon, is running at the London's Duke of York Theatre. The Gate is also bringing out a limited edition of Micheál MacLíammóir's All for Hecuba, with a forward by Colgan. Only 500 numbered copies are for sale to mark its 80th birthday this week.
IT'S A TIME OF CELEBRATION, THEN, FOR a man who has managed to court businessmen — he was cultural adviser on the Seán Dunne development project for Ballsbridge, though he tells me he has fallen out with the developer in recent times — politicians, broadcasters and his beloved actors. Yet despite the glamorous company he keeps, he is careful not to glamorise his own role in the artistic endeavours of those around him.
"I'm an apparatchik, a facilitator," he says, emphasising that the key role of producers is to persuade writers, directors and actors to work with them. "That's what a producer is, a great persuader." It's a job tailor-made for Colgan, whose personal charm and boundless energy have played no small part in making the Gate what it is today, and have left an indelible mark on Irish theatre.
And though he can drop names with glee and an evident self-awareness, it is clear that Colgan's love of theatre is the overriding motivator. "I'm going over to the opening of No Man's Land in London and I'll be hanging out with Pinter," he tells me. "I've just spent a week hanging out with Brian Friel. I spent ages hanging out with Beckett . . . I'm going to have lunch with Tom Stoppard next week . . . this is my life! How great is that?"
It could be worse, I admit.
"It's not that it could be worse," he says. "I actually think I'll rephrase that, Madam interviewer. It couldn't be better." There is a pause as he leans back, wine in hand, a broad smile on his face. "Well, maybe if I were a despot of a small African country . . . ".
MICHAEL COLGAN: HIGHLIGHTS
1971Appointed chairman of Trinity Players as a student at TCD
1974-78Stage-managed and directed at the Abbey Theatre
1980Appointed programme director of the 1981 Dublin Theatre Festival
1983Appointed director of the Gate theatre.
He went on to produce Salomé directed by Stephen Berkoff, A Streetcar Named Desirestarring Frances McDormand, Three Sistersstarring the three Cusack sisters and Faith Healerby Brian Friel among other productions during his time at the Gate.
1991Produced his first Beckett festival at the Gate. Has since produced four more Beckett festivals, and four Pinter festivals, bringing them to New York, London, Sydney and Turin. He has also brought Gate productions of Beckett plays to cities as far afield as Beijing, Montreal, Melbourne, Chicago and Toronto.
1999Formed Blue Angel Films to produce the Beckett on Film project, in which all Beckett's plays were filmed using well-known directors and actors.
2008: Produced the tour of Waiting for Godot, running at 40 venues in 32 counties around the country.