Description | NUI Galway has digitised the archive of the Gate Theatre in Dublin. The project encompasses 200,000 pages, 20,000 images, 150 hours of audio and 750 hours of video. It is a comprehensive archive of material mainly from the period 1980-present, during the time the theatre has been managed by Michael Colgan. Material from prior to that period is currently stored at Northwestern University, Illinois. The archive includes hundreds of videos, thousands of scripts, and designs, many of them relating to major Irish writers. The Gate under Michael Colgan has distinguished itself internationally for its work with two Nobel Prize winners, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. There is extensive correspondence with both writers, as well as huge detail about productions of their work. This will be of interest not only to Irish theatre scholars, but to people from further afield. There is also extensive archival material relating to other major writers, including David Mamet, Conor McPherson and Brian Friel. Indeed, Friel premiered seven plays at the Gate during the last 20 years of his life.
The Gate also has a long tradition of working with some of the world’s great actors; the archive features material relating to Orson Welles, Michael Gambon, John Hurt, Penelope Wilton, Stephen Rea, Ian Holm, Liam Neeson, Charles Dance, and many others. By connecting the Gate material to its existing archival material on the Abbey and Druid theatres, NUI Galway’s status as the leading international centre for the study of Irish theatre will be further enhanced. The University will also have access to an extraordinarily large dataset for several major Irish cultural institutions, opening up opportunities for new research through text and data mining.
The digital archive is accessible from pc's located in the Archives Reading Room in the Hardiman Research Building at NUI Galway. Please call to the Reading Room, email <a href="mailto:specialcollections@nuigalway.ie">specialcollections@nuigalway.ie</a> or call + 353 91 493476. |