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 European Fedora Prize for Opera and will tour internationally in 2023. The opera is co-produced by Straymaker with the Abbey, Once Off Productions and  French ensemble Miroirs Étendus.   

Other Straymaker projects currently in development include Ways of Disappearing, a large-scale feature-film project which sets a creative retelling of the Orpheus myth against the background of the Troubles and The Curing Line, a new multidisciplinary collaboration with poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin and acclaimed, Oscar-nominated animator Ross Stewart.

Straymaker is supported by Arts Council Ireland and Creative Monaghan.