Artistic Directors: Kandis Cook and Nicholas Till

Post-Operative Productions is a multi-disciplinary performance company that stretches opera on the dissecting table to refigure its parts.

Post-Operative Productions exists to develop a critical practice for new music-theatre that recognises that in the 21st century opera survives only as the post-operatic.

Post-Operative Productions employs theatrical forms to relocate music within the social and discursive contexts that give it meaning. Our work is not based upon conventional assumptions of dramatic narrative, character and expression. Instead we explore the specifics of the relationship between place, space, event and sound, we probe the politics of musical production and performance, we prospect for traces of the operatic within contemporary culture.

Post-Operative Productions challenges audiences with work that startles, provokes and delights; work that has been described by Tom Morris, Associate Director of the National Theatre, London, as "accessible as well as innovative".

Post-Operative Productions has developed its productions with the support of the English National Opera Studio, and has established a regular working partnership with one of Europe’s foremost contemporary music ensembles VOCEM electric voice theatre.

In November 2003 the work of Post-Operative Productions was the subject of discussion on the BBC Radio 3 arts programme Nightwaves.

In 2004 Post-Operative Productions was shortlisted for the 2004 Samuel Beckett Award for experimental theatre.

2006

BAC Burst. In May the company curated 'Hearing Voices', a programme of new music theatre works at the BAC BURST Festival. The programme consisted of 'Hearing Voices', work-in-progress by Post-Operative Productions in collaboration with the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre at Sussex University, and extracts from works by composer Paul Barker, and writer/composer team Fraser Grace and Andrew Lovett.

Forum Neues Musiktheater, Stuttgart Opera. Post-Operative Productions team Nick Till and Kandis Cook worked on the collaboration between the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre at Sussex University, Steim Centre in Amsterdam, and Tempo Reale in Florence, to explore the use of interactive audio-visual technologies for new music theatre. The finished work, 'Hearing Voices', was presented at the ISCM World New Music Day Festival in Stuttgart in July.

For further information on the project:

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cromt/1-3-1.html

Publications:

Nicholas Till, “I don’t’ mind if something’s operatic just as long as it’s not opera: A Critical Practice for New Opera and Music Theatre”. (Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol.14 (1), Routledge, February 2004)

“Post Operatic Music Theatre in Europe” in J. Kelleher and N. Ridout, Contemporary Theatres in Europe: Encounters, Locations, Practices, (London: Routledge, 2005)

© Post-Operative Productions, Nick Till, Kandis Cook, 2002