Michael Colgan: Arts Council needs four times current funding

The Arts Council should be getting three or four times what it receives from the Government, the outgoing artistic director of the Gate Theatre has said.

Michael Colgan, who is stepping down after 33 years heading the Dublin theatre, has said the arts is thrown "a few crumbs" and it was time people became annoyed.

He said it made his “blood boil” the way visiting presidents are pandered to about Joyce and Beckett.

“We sell this cultural thing and we do nothing for it,” he said.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Marian Finucane show on Saturday morning, Mr Colgan described President Michael D Higgins as “courageous” during his time as arts minister, but said it would be unfair to say current minister, Heather Humphreys, did not care.

“But to put it (Arts) into a portfolio with so many other things means she has to take her eye off the ball for all of them,” he said.

Asked by presenter Katie Hannon if he sensed a change in theatre, Mr Colgan said what he did in the Gate was “less wanted”.

He said he was into “classical theatre” and “doing plays more or less as they are written”.

“Today there is a new breed of people, theatre makers; their work is ephemeral, it doesn’t last a lot,” he said.

“It’s laudable, there’s a lot of talent going into it, but it’s not me.”

He said he could not re-invent himself.

“The powers that be, like the Arts Council, I’m not sure the work of classical theatre is as high a priority,” he said.

Responding to criticism that the Gate was “too safe” in its choice of plays, Mr Colgan said it was “desperately underfunded”.

The Arts Council paid 20 per cent of their overall costs while “in every other place, it is much, much higher”.

He said he “had to get bums on seats” because the threatre needed 80 to 85 per cent attendance to keep going, which meant being less inventive and less brave.

Questioned about under-representation of women playwrights, he highlighted that the Gate was “a classical theatre, principally”.

“Name for me the great classical plays written by women and I’ll do them,” he said.

He said women were well represented in terms of novelists and poets and the theatre had adapted works by women, including by Daphne Du Maurier and Jane Austen, into plays. The adaptations were "often by women", he said.

Mr Colgan also said many of the plays staged at the Gate and written by men, had “a woman’s theme” and were “all about the woman’s voice”.

Asked whether he was paid too much, Mr Colgan said recent newspaper reports were wrong and he was paid less than half what was reported.

He said he was paid a bonus for work overseas and that was what made his salary look big. His pay last year was reported in The Irish Times as €231,000, including salary, expenses and pension payments.

“My salary is not big at all,” he said.

Asked about his future plans, he cited possible projects including writing a memoir, working in radio or setting up a casting agency.

“I won’t be playing golf,” he said.