The Other Gates: Anglo-American Influences on and from Dublin

Abstract

An important influence on the foundation of the Dublin Gate Theatre in 1928 was the London Gate Theatre Studio. This chapter offers a historiographical survey concerning how the range of connections between these theatres have been treated by theatre commentators up to the present. Alongside this re-examination is a discussion of two other theatres that were also inspired by the London Gate, but established independently by the two London co-directors, Peter Godfrey and Velona Pilcher. Godfrey revived the early programming from London in 1943 at his ‘transplanted’ theatre in Hollywood, which also connected Los Angeles emigré culture back to Ireland. In London, Pilcher worked with a group of women associates to found a ‘new Gate’, the Watergate Theatre Club in 1949, which, with its avant-garde artistic ethos, had a cultural impact on the post-war London scene similar to the achievements of the earlier Gate theatres.