“The Swim­mer” is a sto­ry of love between two young women who are both pro­fes­sion­al swim­mers. Despite their love for each oth­er their sto­ry is not sim­ple. Anna’s moth­er is deeply involved in her life and she works tire­less­ly to shape her daugh­ter to be the suc­cess­ful swim­mer she nev­er was. She will do any­thing to make sure Anna does not stray from the path which she imag­ines for her.

Smoko Com­pa­ny is a South Amer­i­can the­atre com­pa­ny found­ed by Manuel Saez. They  answered some of our ques­tions about their new pro­duc­tion The Swim­mer.

“Smoko is a new the­atre com­pa­ny here in Welling­ton cre­at­ed by Manuel Saez last year before the Fringe Fes­ti­val 201.  We all come from dif­fer­ent artis­tic and cul­tur­al back­grounds which has made the process very inter­est­ing and fun. Every­one has added some­thing into the mix. Our per­spec­tive is quite con­tem­po­rary. Chile has a big the­atre-arts cul­ture and in Latin Amer­i­ca we think Chile has always been a big artis­tic incu­ba­tor, espe­cial­ly San­ti­a­go where is where we come from. We all have in com­mon the love for the­atre and the need of cre­at­ing art, telling sto­ries and shar­ing our work with the world.  We all met here in Welling­ton (not at the same time) through peo­ple we all have in com­mon so we feel very lucky to have such a great group of artists on board putting their tal­ents into this show. There are 6 peo­ple in total work­ing in The Swim­mer : Manuel Saez (Chile) scriptwriter and direc­tor;  Cami­la Fer­nan­dez (Chile) mar­ket­ing and pro­duc­tion; Anas­ta­sia Davis (Rus­sia) actress; Kassie McLuskie (Welling­ton) actress; Meron McCar­dle (Welling­ton — Whakatane) Actress; Pilar Fal­las (Cos­ta Rica) pro­duc­tion assis­tant.

The Swim­mer start­ed 2 years and a half ago with an inves­ti­ga­tion about the life and rou­tines of high per­for­mance ath­letes. Manuel start­ed won­dered what hap­pens inside the mind of those ath­letes that have to post­pone any per­son­al dreams or desires in order to devote to their sport. This research was the foun­da­tion of The Swim­mer, which is a sto­ry that talks about a young ath­lete who is con­flict­ed in between becom­ing the pro­fes­sion­al swim­mer her moth­er always want­ed her to be, or leave every­thing behind for love. It’s about mak­ing dif­fi­cult deci­sions between what you want to do with your live vs. what oth­er peo­ple what you to do with it. This sto­ry is a pow­er­ful dra­ma that can hap­pen to any­one every­where in the world; that is what makes this sto­ry so mean­ing­ful.

We would like the audi­ence to think about how true we actu­al­ly are with our feel­ings, and how much are able to lose for true love. The Swim­mer is about what we “have” to do in oppo­si­tion to “what” we want to do, and the cost of it. Our life deci­sions have an impact on oth­ers, and that is what we are going to show though this sto­ry. There is a mom, a daugh­ter and Tabatha, three lives that are about to change for­ev­er. It is a pow­er­ful con­tem­po­rary dra­ma, 60 min­utes filled with emo­tions total­ly worth watch­ing. The audi­ence will see the 24 hours before a life chang­ing inci­dent. We are step­ping away from how sto­ries are told in a tra­di­tion­al way — we cut scenes in a cin­e­mat­ic way so that is def­i­nite­ly a new approach in sto­ry­telling. The tech­nique used for this play is called Cin­e­ma action of the scenes, which is a film edit­ing approach used in con­tem­po­rary the­atre. Our cuts are fast and sharp, this will make the audi­ence be at a 100% in from start to the end.”