Drumstruck is billed as "the world's first interactive theatrical drumming experience" - and they're not joking about the interactive part. When audience members arrive, they will find a drum on each seat. And they will be encouraged, and taught, to play them during the show.

Creator Warren Lieberman says: "We want people to have fun, to have a voice."

Onstage, the performers – mostly from South Africa but with a couple from Ghana and Nigeria – will be playing bigger drums and will sing and dance on sets and in costumes. And with humour and patience they will instruct the audience in playing the drums – from simple rhythms to more complex ones. And if experience is any guide, by the end of the show everyone will be drumming together. (Drums are available for purchase after the show for those who really fall under the spell).

The show has toured internationally and ran for two years off-Broadway in New York from 2005 to 2007 where celebrity audience members and drummers included Kevin Bacon, Rosie O'Donnell and Nicole Kidman.

Other famous fans of theirs include former US president Bill Clinton and former South African president Nelson Mandela. And they were invited performers for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening ceremony.

Lieberman was an engineer in South Africa who got together with a friend for some amateur drumming one Tuesday night in the 1990s. The following week, more came, and he says it wasn't long before there were a couple of hundred turning up to play. Clearly, there was more potential here than could be realised in a domestic setting.

"I opened up the Drum Cafe in Johannesburg," he says.

The mix of music and refreshments seemed to work and had a positive effect.

"It was a way of bringing people together."

One day someone asked him to teach drumming to a strait-laced corporate group. It might seem incongruous, but it was well received and led to a profitable sideline. And, in 2002, working with director Kathy-Jo Ross, Lieberman created Drumstruck, a full stage production that premiered in Johannesburg. And from there, it went on to international success – in Japan, in South Korea, in the US, and in Australia on a previous visit.

"One time Joe Walsh from the Eagles bought some drums. I asked who they were for and he said for his brother-in-law Ringo. I asked, 'Ringo who?' and he said, 'Ringo Starr'."

While he enjoys the celebrity attention, Lieberman also relishes the response from audience members who may never have touched a drum before but who are, by the end of a show, playing happily away.

To what does he attribute the show's success? In part, he says, it may be explained by the origins of communal drumming in Africa.

"In traditional societies, what happens is you've got to get consensus in towns. You sit down with 20 families and questions arise – who's going to get land? who's going to plough land? – and you need consensus, because people can't leave. It's very important that everybody realises they have the support of the community."

Before meeting to make big decisions, there's a celebration – including singing and dancing and, yes, drumming – to help reinforce the bonds of community.

Lieberman applied some of the same principles to his various projects – the cafe, the corporate drumming classes, and Drumstruck – and perhaps there's something primal in coming together to create hypnotic rhythms on a mass of drums.