Time Keeps The Drummer
Following a brilliant Hong Kong premier, performance innovators Fevered Sleep bring radical 5-hour durational live show to London.
How do children experience time?
Established by artistic directors Sam Butler and David Harradine in 1996, acclaimed London-based creative innovators Fevered Sleep will bring Time Keeps The Drummer on a new UK tour this autumn - a radical five-hour durational performance that invites audiences, young and old alike, to consider, experience, and explore ‘time’ through an entirely new lens. Time Keeps The Drummer will tour to London (12th and 13th September - The Place, London), Nottingham (1st November - nottdance, Fletchers College), and Cambridge (12th April - Cambridge Junction, Cambridge) after a highly successful Hong Kong premiere in April 2025 at WestK.
Roaming across different art forms and modes of performance, Time Keeps The Drummer asks us to consider time through the eyes of children; to ask ourselves, What happens if we just give ourselves time, to slow down, linger and rest: to refuse the time of capitalism, colonialism and work, and to reconnect instead to the time of wonder, fascination and play.
In line with their 29 year-long commitment to nourish and expand creative innovation and opportunity for all generations, each tour location will see Fevered Sleep recruit a brand new cast of local children for each show. Rehearsing together with Sam Butler and David Harradine for two weeks prior to performing, each tour stop will see twelve children join a complex, professional devising process designed to inspire new ideas, feelings, and responses to ‘time’.
Integral to the piece, every performance will see each cast of children joined by an adult drummer, improvising percussion in the air on a live motion-capture drum kit. Experienced only through headphones provided, the drums form the ceaseless beat of clock time - a rhythm that continues as audiences young and old are encouraged to come and go into the space as they please. An organic performance where no one show is ever the same.