I watched another adaptation of Start Swimming at a Fringe festival in Canada. Not only did the play’s repetitive dialogue style really intrigued me, but so did it’s exploration to deconstruct power. That is when it clicked in me - to change the structure, we must understand its foundation. When I got my hands on a copy of the script, I almost wept when I saw that the script had not a single stage direction, no characters. I read that play twice a day for over a year. I initially began research with what, playwright James Fritz wrote the play as a response “Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere”. A book that challenges modern day revolutions and its relevance and the young people behind them. The book’s academic and inaccessible language carried me to over 7 months of research of the dynamics of power, authority, linguistics, psychology, sociology, existentialism and history of revolution. Only then could I construct the play, assign lines to actors, construct my own character arcs and storylines in the neutral script. I had nothing but words and the sound of a buzzer and bell to play with.

Building Start Swimming felt like I was constructing my own nightmarish dream. One in the balance of the Twilight zone and what was happening in the streets of revolting countries. Grotowski’s work, which uses movement to unlock our repressed feelings, married beautifully with Pavlov’s classical conditioning soundtrack to set the scene. Working on this piece was difficult at times to see- despite the surrealistic nature of the play, how closely it lingered to our reality. Though the production of this piece did not create direct change, It brought hope and brings questions to light that begins the revolution to change.