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| Fevered Sleep |
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Fevered Sleep was founded in 1996 by David Harradine and Sam Butler. We make new work in performance, publication and visual art, for children and for adults.
All our work is design-led and devised collaboratively. The work is grounded in ideas and in research, not in form, and each project might be radically different from what has gone before it. We create environments and encounters that allow audiences to make a discovery about themselves, or to see the world in new and unexpected ways.
We show our work across the UK and internationally, through touring, and through partnerships with a wide range of venues. We are based at the Young Vic in London, where we are an associate company. Our work is produced in association with Fuel.
Fevered Sleep’s Artistic Director is David Harradine; Associate Artistic Directory is Sam Butler.
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Productions and Projects
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Above Me the Wide Blue Sky
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2013
Staged within a multi-screen film installation, with a soundscape of birdsong, electronic music and a new score for string quartet, Above Me The Wide Blue Sky weaves together images, movement and sound with stories of love, loss and belonging from an ever changing world.
As part of the development of Above Me the Wide Blue Sky, Fevered Sleep gathered stories of people talking about their relationships with nature throughout Autumn 2012. A man whose memories are carried by birds. A woman whose children have grown with the trees. A family whose garden is the fathomless ocean. If who we are and what we call home is inextricably linked with nature, what happens when everything starts to change? performed at LICA, Lancaster, 22 - 23 February; Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, 27 February - 2 March; Young Vic, London, 7 - 28 March 2013
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Above Me the Wide Blue Sky
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And the Rain Falls Down
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2011
Imagine a world where every drop of water has a life of its own ...
A world where rainbows form from umbrellas, where fountains spout from plug-holes, and where eventually the rain really does fall down.
And the Rain Falls Down was inspired by the daily rituals of a child’s life. The show grew from ideas about playing with water while having a bath, and developed into a piece all about the joys of drips, drops, fountains, puddles and rain. Performed with very few words, striking images, and 40 gallons of water, it is a playful, musical and rule-breaking show created especially for 3- and 4-year-olds. And the Rain Falls Down is a celebration of the watery things in the world.
A co-production by Fevered Sleep and Fuel, the show toured the Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham; Young Vic, London; mac, Birmingham, Bristol Old Vic, Bristol; and Unity Theatre, Liverpool, 16 February - 16 April 2011.
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And the Rain Falls Down
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The Forest
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2009 - 2012
The Forest is the first piece in a series of projects for children that explore different kinds of landscape. It explores forests as places of transformation and change; places where you encounter things that are not quite what they seem; places where you become lost; where scale, distance and time are confused; and places where we encounter animals and light and darkness and weather.
Inspired by the forests we know from myth and fairytale, by the real forests that pepper the UK, and by the forests of our imaginations, it plays with light and sound and combines things from the natural world (conkers, pine cones, leaves, birdsong, people, trees) with a set made of metal, mirror and glass. It is the first dance-based piece Fevered Sleep has made for children, and is aimed at children aged 4 and over. In 2011, The Forest played at Stratford Circus, London, in July, and at the Sydney Opera House, Australia, in September. In February - March 2012, the production toured the UK.
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The Forest
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An Infinite Line: Brighton
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2008
An Infinite Line: Brighton was commissioned by the 2008 Brighton Festival as an exploration of and response to the quality of natural light in Brighton. The project was in three parts: a site-specific performance piece, an installation of 8mm cine films, and a book.
The performance took place in a former print works in the centre of the city, in an underground space devoid of natural light. Rather than trying to recreate the light, the performance presented a series of images, soundscape, texts, actions and lighting events which combined to form a new visual landscape, one which evoked the sensual and subjective experience of the natural light, but didn’t describe it.
The installation took place in the same space as the performance, during the day. It consisted of thirty 8mm cine projectors, projecting short films depicting the light falling on the natural and urban landscapes of Brighton. Ranging from the abstract (light as a wash of colour on the churning surface of the sea) to the literal (the mirror ball turning slowly on top of the pier) the films, projected onto blocks of chalk – like the chalk of the local cliffs – created a flickering and constantly changing environment of colour, light and sound.
Created in collaboration with book designers Valle Walkley, the book version of An Infinite Line: Brighton is a collection of writings which describe in words the mercurial and ephemeral light as it changes across a day, across seasons, and across a year. Fevered Sleep is currently (2013) developing new versions:
An Infinite Line: Dunnet Head is being created at the most northerly point on the British mainland.
An Infinite Line: Thames is an ongoing research project, that looks at the light falling over London from the points of view of the bridges spanning the river.
An Infinite Line: Merseyside. photo: Matthew Andrews, courtesy Fevered Sleep website
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An Infinite Line: Brighton
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Feast Your Eyes
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2003 - 2004
Feast Your Eyes was a new fairytale, featuring a greedy princess, a child-eating giant, and a couple of enormous mice. The audience were seated around an oversized dining table that became a stage and a projection surface, and the show ended with a celebratory meal that they shared with the performers.
A theatre piece about food for children aged 4 to 7. Feast Your Eyes was the first part in a trilogy of projects made for children that are inspired by the rituals and games of everyday life. The second part, And the Rain Falls Down, is a celebration of water and of the playfulness of bathtime. The third, Brilliant, is about the deep emotions, the magical imaginings and the secret games that are conjured when the lights go out, when it’s time to go to bed.
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Feast Your Eyes
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More About
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Film:
It's the Skin You're Living In
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It’s the Skin You’re Living In is a multi-format film project, that explores and challenges images of climate change. Shot in a series of locations from the islands of Svalbard in the High Arctic to a kitchen in a house in London – via the beaches and headlands of Barra and Vatersay in the Outer Hebrides, the M11 motorway, a dairy farm in Bedfordshire and the outskirts of Hackney and the Olympic Park – the project suggests that climate change isn’t a matter just concerning distant landscapes and threatened animals, but is an ever present part of everyone’s daily lives.
There is a man dressed like a bear. Over the course of a fragmented journey, the bear-skin-costume is dismantled, revealing the man inside the animal.
It’s the Skin You’re Living In is an attempt to make images of climate change that remind us of how profoundly we’re connected to both nature and culture. The project is part of Cape Farewell’s Sea Change programme. In 2013 we will release a new version of the film as a multi-user app. Projects in Development 2013: An Infinite Line is an ongoing series of projects that respond to the quality of natural light in different places. An Infinite Line: Brighton, commissioned for the 2008 Brighton Festival, was the first in this series. An Infinite Line is genuinely cross-disciplinary, and might lead to new works in performance, installation, sound art, publication, broadcast, film and video. As each version of the project evolves as a response to the particular quality of light in a particular place, each will find a form most suited to its location. We are currently developing several new versions:
An Infinite Line: Dunnet Head is being created at the most northerly point on the British mainland.
An Infinite Line: Thames is an ongoing research project, that looks at the light falling over London from the points of view of the bridges spanning the river.
An Infinite Line: Merseyside.
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