Born in Dublin in 1950, he was educated at
Trinity College Dublin, where, as a student, he became chairman of Trinity Players. In 1983, he became 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 30 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 City 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 to 1994, he was a member of the
Arts Council of Ireland and he was Chairman of the
St. Patrick's Festival from 1996 to 1999. 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 honorary OBE from
Queen Elizabeth II. He has three children, Sarah, Sophie and Richard. ==Sexual harassment allegations (2017)==