Kate Champion, Artistic Director of BSSTC, had a bold idea for the company’s 2024 Perth Festival offering: put playwright Steve Rogers‘s play The Pool on in the Bold Park Aquatic Centre pool. Mounting a production in and around an Olympic pool presents both seemingly impossible challenges as well as exciting creative opportunities, and The Pool rises to the challenge and seizes opportunities in many ways, but falls short in others.
There is a vast concrete seating area to settle into, and we’re told there isn’t a bad seat in the ‘house’; however, more of the action tends to happen at the shallow end and the far side of the pool, and there are concrete pillars to peep around. Instructions come through the headset to help us distinguish our right ears from our left, and soon the play begins. I feel compelled to note that while headphones can be a great tool in contemporary theatre, they can also cause some folks discomfort, and there doesn’t appear to be an alternate sound source for those who might want some time without them during the show.
Opening scenes are rather mundane and even soporific, as three separate storylines are introduced – one featuring older white folks and an adult daughter (Polly Low, Julia Moody, Geoff Kelso and Emma Jackson), one featuring second-generation Aussie teen couple (Edyll Ismail and Tobias Muhafidin), and one featuring the aquatic centre employees (Kylie Bracknell, Joel Jackson, and Anna Gray). There is some crossover between storylines, but some of this community’s stories stay (noticeably) separate. There is also a chorus that moves through the pool in support of many scenes, most significantly, the inner monologues of individual performers.
These inner monologues are interspersed between vignettes through which the aforementioned storylines unfold. The monologues range from nostalgic musings about decades past, exploration of multicultural identity, and raising awareness about disability, all told through the lens of the Australian public pool as seen through the eyes of the play’s characters. However, Carys Munks‘s monologue, where she shares so many important truths about how her disability led her to find a safe, inclusive, and personally fulfilling space at the pool, stands alone in its own space within the play’s framework. Stylistically, her story pushes more firmly than any of the others into the verbatim end of theatre. For me, this made her moment the most compelling portion of the work because of its authenticity and its way of inviting us into her experience and her perspective.
The Pool‘s technical challenges and opportunities are significant, to be sure. Composer and sound designer Tim Collins had to work out how to amplify the actors both in and out of the water, through headphones, and with original music to underscore it all. This was executed flawlessly without a single crackle, dropout, or miscue from the tech desk. However, the realm of lighting design was conspicuously missing from the production, due to what specific logistical, public safety, or artistic considerations, I am unsure. I felt its absence deeply throughout the production, as we rely so heavily on its presence in the theatre to help direct our gaze, support the storytelling, and round out our sensory immersion into a show’s constructed world.
The show’s theme of community is driven home by having some of the audience jump in at the end for a short water aerobics session led by Sandra (Kylie Bracknell), the pool manager, Kirk (Joel Jackson), the swimming instructor, and Quinn (Anna Gray). This is one of the key features that will ensure that The Pool will go down in the books and in the collective memories of festival goers and theatre enthusiasts as a unique and bold performance endeavour by BSSTC.
CICELY BINFORD
The Pool runs at Bold Park Aquatic Centre until 25 Feb as part of Perth Festival. For tickets and more information, visit here.
