Love and Not Knowing celebrates more than twenty-five years of the work of Fevered Sleep, the UK-based performance company founded and led by co-artistic directors Sam Butler and David Harradine.
Fevered Sleep creates projects for adults and children that manifest in multiple forms and are as likely to be located in a gallery, a care home or a shopping centre as in a theatre. Nothing that Fevered Sleep does is ever just one thing: what might start out as an installation by day turns to a performance at night – a live event then remembered in another form, like a book. An improvised dance, over many hours, creates a photographic exhibition. A theatre work is re-imagined for screen. A question, a frustration, a feeling, leads to a gathering with more people (and sometimes animals), more questions, on streets, around a market stall, in a veterinary school, by the sea or in a forest. Love and Not Knowing is therefore not only about Fevered Sleep but is – in itself – a work by Fevered Sleep, a manifestation of Fevered Sleep and a part of the ever-evolving, open whole that is Fevered Sleep.
The six chapters of the book bring together a range of different voices from people with differing relationships to and perspectives on the company and their processes. They draw upon distinct memories, moments and projects to explore core themes that have continued to run through Fevered Sleep’s work over time: On Place, On Young People and Children, On Animals, On Care, On Being Together and On Love and Not Knowing. The result is a constellation of diverse voices, practices and experiences that illuminate the deeply researchful – and deeply felt – nature of the company’s work. Their reflections offer the reader a rich tapestry of material that unfolds Fevered Sleep’s practice and the ways in which their projects open out new ways of seeing and being in the world, with curiosity, compassion, care, love and not knowing.
