KEPT is an interdisciplinary performance work that merges percussion, language, and installation to ask how sound can hold what words cannot. Built from found materials—steel, wood, and cloth—the piece transforms objects of labor and endurance into instruments of memory and resonance.
Developed through BN1 Arts Centre’s Artist Development Scheme in Brighton, U.K., KEPT extends the language of percussive theatre into something more reflective and human. Each object—a stock tank, a suspended mattress, a vessel resembling a coffin—becomes both instrument and witness. Through rhythm, silence, and story, the work listens for the pulse beneath personal and collective histories, tracing how communities reclaim themselves through attention and sound.
Drawing on my background as a performer, writer, and music director with STOMP, the project continues a lineage of transforming everyday materials into expressive language. Yet KEPT shifts the focus inward—from spectacle to listening, from entertainment to empathy. The residency at BN1 Arts will allow collaboration with a sound designer, movement director, and dramaturg to refine both the musical and narrative architecture of the piece, preparing it for its Brighton Fringe 2026 premiere.
After its U.K. debut, KEPT will tour to U.S. venues and community settings in partnership with arts centers, universities, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). These workshops and post-show dialogues use rhythm and story as tools for emotional regulation, recovery, and creative connection.
At a time when isolation and burnout are widespread, KEPT offers a space to slow down and reconnect through sound and shared presence. The work reminds audiences that art can be both a mirror and a medicine—something that restores the capacity to feel, to listen, and to be moved together.
Following the premiere, the project will expand into a touring and educational model integrating rhythm, writing, and recovery practices. Through performances, residencies, and a developing “Rhythm and Recovery” curriculum, KEPT will continue to build bridges between art, education, and mental health advocacy—amplifying the belief that creative attention can change how we heal, learn, and live together.
KEPT is less a confession than a collective act: a reclamation of noise, memory, and attention, and a reminder that what’s been broken can still resound when we listen together.
Learn More: https://keptshow.com/