Bannard Cogley worked to establish the Wexford Opera Society 3–4 years before World War I,[8] and the family moved to Ireland[10][4] in 1914[7][6] or at least by 1917.

[12] She worked with the Dublin Drama League, and the Hardwicke Street Theatre Company, with whom she performed as Madame Ranevesky to good reviews, in the first Irish staging of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard as directed by John MacDonagh in 1919.

[9] One source states that both of the Cogleys were at one point imprisoned simultaneously by the British authorities, with Bannard Cogley arranging plays even in jail,[6] and sworn witnessed records mention involvement with Republican activities from 1917 onwards, storing arms and ammunition, passing messages and providing shelter to colleagues on the run.

This theatre hosted performances from a number of Irish playwrights and sets designed by artists including Art O'Murnaghan.

[7] Detained at the Sinn Fein offices on Suffolk Street in November 1922, Bannard Cogley's worries for her children while she was held were recorded by Rosamund Jacob.

Kernoff introduced her to wider communist and socialist circles in Ireland, and produced several portraits of her[1][15] including a study in 1930.

Elaine Sisson stresses that Bannard Cogley's cabaret would not have been comparable to the more hedonistic scene found in the Kit-Kat Club or the Tingel Tangel, but that for the cultural landscape of the post-Civil War Irish Free State, it was a more permissive and experimental expressive performance space.

[9][21] She also acted in the inaugural show of the Gate, Peer Gynt by Ibsen, in October 1928, and many other early plays of the new theatre, as well as participating in costume making.

[9] Her Harcourt Street club also hosted most early Gate rehearsals, including that of Faust when the theatre moved to its long-term home on Cavendish Row.

[25] Bannard Cogley's cabaret closed after she moved to London in the 1930s, frustrated with the increasingly conservative culture under de Valera,[9] opening the Green Curtain Theatre Club there.

She then opened the Studio Theatre, dedicated to the production of "unusual plays", in a basement at 43 Upper Mount Street, and ran it until failing eyesight curtailed her activities.

Although she had stated in 1955 that she was writing "my reminiscences of Ireland and the Irish theatre and all my friends",[8] unlike many of her contemporaries Bannard Cogley did not actually publish a memoir or a collection of personal papers.