“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.”