Straymaker is a new opera and music-theatre company led by Irish composer Michael Gallen. Established in 2019, the company works with leading Irish and international artists in the creation of groundbreaking, genre-bending performance work for live and digital platforms. Straymaker’s production team is headed by Maura O’Keeffe, and its film production is co-ordinated by Roisín Geraghty. 

Rooted in the Irish border region, Straymaker’s manifesto is one of finding new ideas at the margins of disciplines, places and identities. The company is driven by a desire to find the threads of contemporary creation and performance-making that can be drawn from the rich storytelling and musical traditions that flourished outside the grand halls of imperial power.

In November 2021, Michael Gallen’s new opera Elsewhere had its world premiere at the Abbey Theatre, described by the Irish Times as “an extraordinary, shocking, funny, and, ultimately, moving piece of contemporary theatre”. Based on the story of the 1919 Monaghan Asylum Soviet, Elsewhere was shortlisted for the Fedora Prize for Opera and for Best Opera at the Irish Times Theatre Awards. The show was remounted for a national tour in Spring 2024, again receiving widespread critical and popular acclaim. The opera is co-produced by Straymaker with the Abbey, Once Off Productions and French ensemble Miroirs Étendus.   

The Curing Line, a new music-theatre work based on themes of healing, cultural extinction and environmental collapse, will premiere at Kilkenny Arts Festival, Copenhagen Opera Festival and Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival in 2025. The Curing Line has also been nominated for the Fedora Prize for Opera, Straymaker’s second time being nominated for this prestigious award.

Other Straymaker projects currently in development include Ways of Disappearing, a large-scale opera-film project which sets a creative retelling of the Orpheus myth against the background of the Troubles

Straymaker is supported by Arts Council Ireland and Creative Monaghan.