Timaeus and The Teacher is an opera about freedom and nationhood. The Teacher, a young Vietnamese man who teaches English, attempts to flee Saigon by boat in 1977, only to find himself trapped at sea with a coterie of travelers who share his yearning for liberty. Drifting between nations, these voyagers become trapped in a system of global maritime trade, where national identity becomes a form of barter and trade, designed to lubricate the circulation of goods while policing the migration of people. Battered by the sun and a sea that grows increasingly threatening to his survival, The Teacher begins to question what it means to search for national belonging in a world steadily shaped by the will of Nature.