Who hasn’t sat people watching in a public place and wished for a microphone nearby to hear their conversations better, or for them to monologue about their home life a bit so you can get some background?
I certainly have, and where better to do some quality people-watching than a public pool, where people at all stages of life come together to relax, play, or exercise. Black Swan in partnership with Perth Festival invites us to live our people-watching dreams from the bleachers of Bold Park Aquatic Centre’s outside pool, with the help of a pair of headphones.
The Pool. Photography by Daniel J Grant.
The Pool doesn’t have the drama of an overarching storyline, instead giving glimpses into a small slice of people’s lives, while the chorus swims laps or does synchronised bombies in the background.
One theme of a lot of the characters’ lives, understandable due to the family-friendly environment of a public swimming pool, is parenting. Teenagers Safiyah and Ananda (Edyll Ismail and Tobias Muhafidin) have engineered an escape from their parents’ supervision to enjoy a date, reminding us of the delicious joy of both young love and rebellion. Greta (Polly Low) works hard to overcome her judgemental mum instincts and patch up her relationship with her grown-up daughter Joni. Emma Jackson gives an exquisite performance as Joni. Her breathless, slightly manic rant to supportive swim instructor Kirk (Joel Jackson) captures the self-consciousness of an adult working through her traumas and learning to swim for the first time. There are no cataclysmic life changes or plot twists happening at this poolside, just ordinary people doing their best.
The Pool. Photography by Daniel J Grant.
Interspersed with the conversations that we hear closely through our headsets, there are pre-recorded monologues from various characters. The monologue format combined with Tim Collins’ music design gives these moments a feeling of momentousness, and sometimes melancholy, further elevating the everyday thoughts and struggles of normal people to a height worthy of commanding an audience’s attention.
The Pool. Photography by Daniel J Grant.
The finale of the show involved the much-anticipated aqua aerobics class, where myself and around fifty other audience members who had nominated ourselves in advance stripped down to our togs and collected a pool noodle to take in with us. Kylie Bracknell as the ever-patient pool manager Sandra took us through a few basic moves to an upbeat backing track. Her speech about the sense of community created at a public pool was touching to listen to but had an even greater impact when a group of strangers became my fellow aerobics classmates. We laughed at ourselves as we bobbed around in circles, our pool noodles creating brightly coloured bridges between us.
The Pool is on until Sunday 25 February at Bold Park Aquatic Centre, City Beach.