Stephen Tiller is an opera and theatre director and producer, a writer, dramaturg, actor, teacher and workshop facilitator. He is the Artistic Director of OperaMachine.

Stephen studied English at Newcastle University and soon after trained at RADA. He then worked as an actor for over 15 years with such theatre luminaries as Bill Gaskill, Stephen Daldry, Corin and Vanessa Redgrave, Danny Boyle and Katie Mitchell.  At the same time he started to write, direct and produce for the theatre, co-wrote a prizewinning NYT show and produced the Vagina Monologues both off-West End and on-. By this time he had already begun writing for the theatre himself and, under the umbrella of The Wedding Collective, directed two of his own site specific pieces  – Warcrime and The Daughter – which toured both in the UK and abroad. It has only been in the last five years or so, after a chance meeting with some singers in Graz, Austria, he’s ‘got into opera’.

In 2010 and 2011 he directed and produced two different site-specific versions of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Consul in Shoreditch and then Limehouse. A year after that, under the umbrella of OperaMachine, a new company, he created and directed Finding Butterfly – a ‘mash’ version of the Puccini Classic. The production has since toured to Japan, playing the 6th Bird Theatre Festival in Tottori.

He loves working with young or emerging singers and actors – of all ages – has taught at most of the major conservatories and universities. He is currently very excited to be working with Fourth Monkey TC, having just directed an epic version of Good Person of Szechuan with 50 plus stars of the FMTC  training. His main interest  as a practitioner and teacher is Brecht, Action, Physical Theatre, Verbatim, Devising, Narrative and Text.

Stephen is also the Artistic Director of Sanctuary Voices, a group of professional singers, performers and teachers who run workshops with refugees, asylum seekers, trafficked people and recent migrants. Our work has been featured at The Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Shoreditch and Praxis New Voices Festival and with the Grand Union Orchestra. In July 2014 SV singers will perform at the Young Vic in David Greig’s The Events.

Stephen has worked, among others, with Rose Bruford, De Montfort University, LAPA, Goldsmiths, the Central School of Speech and Drama, The London School of Ballet, Reading University, Arts Ed, the Italia Conti Degree Course, Middlesex University, the Setagaya Theatre Tokyo, London Metropolitan University, the Kunst Universitaet Graz department of Opera, Royal National Theatre, Cardboard Citizens, as well as in Lebanon, Palestine, Bosnia, Serbia –  and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.