The couple will receive their award at the Society's annual dinner on Saturday, May 1, at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel.

Eire Society president William Pear praised the O'Reillys as "two of the theater world's most accomplished practitioners who so brilliantly epitomize the mission of the Eire Society."

Former Society president Bill O'Donnell praised Sugan for "putting an Irish face on Boston theater," one that was surprisingly absent when the O'Reillys first moved here in 1992 from Atlanta, where they first began staging Irish plays.

Sugan Theatre created a welcomed but overlooked niche in the Boston theater scene by bringing in the works of Tom Murphy, Conor McPherson, Martin McDonagh and Marina Carr, whose plays offer a view about contemporary Ireland that is so new and ever changing that it remains unfamiliar to many theater-goers here.

Portraying the flaws and foibles of a new Ireland often at odds with the old-fashioned and dated version of romantic Ireland is always a challenge in Boston. When the Abbey Theatre first came to Boston in 1911 with a production of John M. Synge's "Playboy of the Western World," the play was decried as "vulgar, unnatural, anti-national and anti-Christian," according to the Boston Post. In later years, the phrase "Banned in Boston" resurfaced when Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude" (1929) and the Broadway musical "Hair" (1970) were attacked by city censors as being racy and immoral.

Ironically, the task at hand for Sugan has not been in staving off moral crusaders offended by profanity and reality, but rather in finding ways to stay solvent while staying true to cutting-edge art.

"We've received accolades from theater critics and from our audiences," said Carmel O'Reilly, a native of County Fermanagh who serves as the artistic director. "But establishing a run in the theater is not the easiest endeavor financially."

Her husband, Peter, a native of Kildare, manages the finances and a variety of tasks, from ticket-taker and co-producer to grant writer and media spokesman.

"We took risks that were calculated," she said. "Thanks to Peter's steady hand we always managed to keep in line with our budget while staging high quality productions. We've been meticulous about our production and creative about our budget."

That formula paid off, as the Sugan became an Equity company, though by then the group had already groomed a generation of exceptional actors led by Dublin's Billy Meleady. Sugan also worked closely with young Irish playwrights like Aidan Parkinson and Ronan Noone by staging full professional productions of their early works.

The Sugan won numerous awards, including several Eliot Norton Awards, and became a resident troupe at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End. The Huntington Theatre, one of Boston's most storied theater companies, is now involved with the newly refurbished BCA. It will handle box office sales and other professional aspects that will give the O'Reillys a new freedom to grow their company.

"We choose plays and playwrights that are often unknown, and that can be a big obstacle," Carmel O'Reilly said. "Many of the plays you see today are reflective of what is popular on Broadway, whereas ours would be more familiar to Dublin and London audiences.

(For information on the upcoming season visit www.sugan.org.)

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Society's storied history

The Eire Society formed in 1937 by a group of Irish-Americans interested in spreading awareness of the cultural achievements of the Irish. It quickly became Boston's leading cultural and intellectual Irish group, focusing on new works of literature and music, delving into Irish history, and partnering with local institutions like Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Museum of Fine Arts.

In winning the Eire Society Gold Medal Award, Carmel and Peter O'Reilly become part of an illustrious tradition dating back to 1945, when Derry-born architect Charles Donagh Maginnis became the first award recipient. Other winners have included then-Sen. John F. Kennedy (1957), filmmakers John Ford (1955) and John Houston (1968), actress Siobhan McKenna (1971), writers Mary Lavin (1974) and Seamus Heaney (1982), and scholars Eion McKiernan (1992) and Margaret MacCurtain (1993).

The Society is a membership group and holds regular functions throughout the year. For more information visit www.eiresociety.org.