While the mood seems fitting for an opera, the plot isn’t one you’d typically see on a stage accustomed to rosy cheeks and tall white wigs. “I’m not sure that the Royal Opera House had ever done anything like that before – the team was mostly female and mixed heritage, from the choreographer and composer to director and librettist.” Even the process of adapting the book didn’t follow tradition, with improvised notes being made along the way. “I think that was quite a scary process for them, but when you’re trying to tell a layered, nuanced female story, can it really fit into the archetypal form that is used to tell stories from a male perspective?” Sabrina’s work often tells stories from different perspectives, but they are only ‘different’ in that the worlds of publishing, theatre and poetry are hostile to voices that stray from the canon. “Representation is always important. There’s just too much talk. I get it, because industries are based on talk, but debates, panels and presentations don’t mean anything because logistically nothing has moved on; we’re still in such a rubbish place with representation.” How do we make real change, moving away from tokenism and diversity internships that often lead to nothing? “People just need to not be lazy. Instead of saying, 'Well this is a person I know', find people that you don’t know who maybe don’t have the same experience. There’s a reason they don’t have the same experience, so give it to them and help make it a fairer world, basically.”