About Us
In 2006, Stephen Tiller was facilitating workshops for unemployed artists in Graz, Austria, as part of a European Union funded initiative.
On that visit he met, socially, a group of student opera singers from the Arts University and at some point asked if they had received much actor training, an area in which he was highly skilled. When they said ‘Not enough!’ he offered to return to the city and run some workshops with them.
From these sessions, a group of students emerged. And a project. Giancarlo Menotti’s The Consul.
Written in the years after World War Two, it was a fierce attack on the authorities’ heartless treatment of displaced people, political activists, refugees and the stateless.
As much of Stephen’s work had been with political and activist theatre, despite his classical training at RADA, the subject was instantly appealing. And, as he got deeper and deeper into the music, the project became even more vital and attractive.
The Consul goes to dark places. The heroine and her baby die. Her activist husband is arrested by the secret police. The State ‘wins’. And The Consul of the title never appears. The so-called Free World does nothing – and cares nothing – about the poor, the powerless or the voiceless….
But, for all of its dark outcome in terms of the story, the piece contains a passionate and powerful cry from the throats of those very people. Such arias as To This We’ve Come and Papers! Papers! the quintet Give Us Back The Earth could not be a more fitting rallying cry for the voiceless, particularly in the last 10 or 12 years, against the massive refugee crises provoked by the West’s ‘humanitarian interventions’ in the Middle East, Africa and beyond.
This, then, was the genesis of the work of OperaMachine.
Prior to this, Stephen had had no interest in opera. 2006 changed all that. And though it’s still a love-hate relationship with the form, it’s certainly not one of disinterest.