Colgan praised for success over 22 years at Gate

Special Tribute Award: The 2005 Special Tribute Award was presented to Dublin's Gate theatre director Michael Colgan. Or the "it's-time-you-retired-award", as described by actor/director Alan Stanford who made the presentation.

Michael Colgan, he said, "does not have a retiring nature, in any sense of the word".

He added: "For more that 30 years now he has been an intrinsic part of the very lifeblood that courses through the often sluggish veins of the Irish theatrical body.

"But wherever he has been, the blood flows easily. One way or another!"

He noted that "humility has never been one of his strong points" but he had forged friendships, most of which lasted. Reflecting on Michael Colgan's achievements at the Gate this past 22 years, he said: "He has established Samuel Beckett as the most commercially successful avant-garde writer of the 20th century.

"He brought Brian Friel, Ireland's greatest living writer, back to the Gate. He has celebrated the life and work of England's finest playwright, Harold Pinter, when the English theatre failed to do so. He had made the theatre under his guardianship, a company of international renown . . . he has succeeded from Broadway to Beijing."

Accepting the award, Mr Colgan agreed "it is true I don't have a humble bone in my body" but he was genuinely surprised to receive the award, not least as he felt he was too young.

Quoting Beckett, he said: "I will not give up, not with the fire in me now." He accepted the award "on behalf of my beloved Gate theatre".

The board and personnel there had no equal, he said.

They were the best team and he wished to take the opportunity to thank them. He described the board as high powered and spoke of Mary Finan as his closest confidante and adviser. "If she left I might go with her. I couldn't do without her."

He thanked "wonderful people, two women", Anne Clarke of Landmark Productions, who would become "the greatest force in Irish theatre" and "the inestimable, extraordinary Marie Rooney" who had been and remained his "rock, my right hand, my conscience. I can never repay her for what she has done."

He paid tribute to the contribution of Susan Fitzgerald who was "a great support to me at the Gate and in the years beforehand. I can never repay that debt, on and off the stage. Publicly, I want to acknowledge that."

He also thanked their children Sarah, Sophie, and Richard - "the best friends I have".