A new project by Sleepwalk Collective

Wrestling fearlessly with the demons of the early 21st century – rampant capitalism, toxic masculinity, internet boredom – Swimming Pools is about how we might live together in the blinding brightness of the future. 

Across a series of imagined swimming pools, arranged like the ascending levels of a retro videogame, a sequence of intimate, confessional monologues are whispered out by four women onstage.

Sleepwalk Collective is the award-winning creator of Amusements, Karaoke, Domestica and  Kourtney Kardashian.

Swimming Pools was due to open at Battersea Arts Centre in May 2020, but the pandemic caused everything to be abruptly stopped just as final rehearsals were about to begin. The company decided to continue working in isolation and at a distance and created Swimming Pools: Home Movie, a collage of phone videos and audio messages that they made for each other over four long weeks of talking and thinking and trying to find ways to be together, somehow, during lockdown.

‘It documents a chaotic, freeform attempt to recover a sense of intimacy and closeness through technology, and to imagine the show we will one day make when this is all over…’

The show is now complete and premieres at Teatro de la Abadía, Madrid in December 2020 and will be available for UK touring in 2021.

A Teatro de La Abadía, Madrid co-production. Supported by Battersea Arts Centre, Graner Creation Centre for Dance and Live Art Barcelona, Shift Key/Creative Europe and the Basque Government.

“Few theatre-makers capture the vertiginous thrill and terror of contemporary existence as captivatingly as Sleepwalk Collective” The Guardian