Time Keeps The Drummer

2023 - Present

A wild experiment where theatre, dance, installation and improvisation collide, this 5-hour performance invites you to experience time on your own terms.

Photos by Benedict Johnson, London 2025.
Banner photo by Winnie Yeung, Visual Voices, Hong Kong 2025.

Tickets on sale now for Brighton Festival, 8 - 10 May.

Time Keeps The Drummer is the latest in a long series of experimental projects created in collaboration with non-professional children and young people.

Performed by a twelve children and a single adult percussionist, it invites you to slow down and experience time differently. Part performance, part installation, the show is suitable for everyone: adults who are interested in contemporary experimental work, and children and families who are seeking out bold new experiences. The performance evolves over five hours, unfolding as a unique and unrepeatable experience, directed live and shaped in real-time.

In Time Keeps The Drummer time is cyclical, strange and playful. It loops, it’s fluid, it’s non-linear. Countering this, the percussionist plays a relentless beat on a motion-capture drum kit (which people in the audience can only hear on headphones), reminding us of the continuous presence of clock time. The show explores time from the perspectives of children, animals and the planet: sometimes deeply philosophical, sometimes lost in the anarchy of play.

Time Keeps The Drummer was commissioned by WestK in Hong Kong, premiering in their state of the art theatre Freespace in 2025. For each iteration of the project, we work with a new cast of children from the local area, who devise, rehearse and create with us to shape each new version.