The Royal Irish Academy of Music is proud to present the Irish première of Stephen McNeff’s Banished, an adaptation of Steve Gooch’s play, Female Transport, to a libretto by Olivia Fuchs. Putting young women firmly centre-stage, this brave new work tells the compelling story of women who were transported to Australia in the last years of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and their survival against all odds on a long, arduous and dangerous passage to the other side of the world. Kilmainham Gaol, now one of the largest unoccupied prisons in Europe, is the extraordinary site-specific setting for this captivating new work.

Whilst the building symbolises the tradition of militant and constitutional nationalism for many, the Gaol’s own special history as a depot for convicts before they were transported to Australia, makes it a particularly poignant location in which to present McNeff’s new opera to Irish audiences.

Image from the 2016 premiere at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, London