Survival Swim

The line between magic, spirituality and human experience is at the core of new play How I Learned to Swim by Somebody Jones. Sophie Pierce reports

Grief is often described as something that comes in waves. Sometimes it overwhelms us, forcing us to fight for every breath. Other times it is an everpresent gentle lapping at our feet, the ebb and flow of a tide that has become part of daily life.

What better backdrop, therefore, for a play that explores our relationship with grief, than the open ocean?

How I Learned to Swim is a new play from LA-born playwright, Somebody Jones. It tells the story of Jamie, a 30-something Black woman who learns to swim after her brother goes missing at sea, and she discovers what it is to swim for survival in every sense of the word.

“My ideas are kind of like ghosts; when I have one, it seeps in and haunts me until I write it down,” says Somebody. “I had this moment on holiday in Malta a few years ago, where I got caught in strong waves during a boat trip, and I found no matter how hard I kicked, I wasn’t moving. Eventually, all I could do was float, it was really scary. I realised what a fine line there is between swimming and drowning, and I knew I wanted to explore it in a play.”

Like the water that inspires her so much, Somebody is a force to be reckoned with. She has received awards for her writing and created a name for herself among London’s theatrical community, having moved here in 2018 to study an MA in Writing for Performance and Dramaturgy at Goldsmiths. When we caught up with Somebody, ‘How I Learned to Swim’ was enjoying a muchapplauded, month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, before moving to London in September, followed by a run at the Bristol Old Vic. No small achievement for her first published play.

Bringing it to life has been the result of a three-year determination, which resulted in Somebody securing Rebecca Prentice as her producer.

“I’d been aware of Somebody for some time, so when I had the chance to read her script, I was so excited,” says Rebecca. “I loved the way the play deals with mythic and magical characters, combined with that universal human experience of how we process grief. The tension that came when these two things complemented each other, I knew it would be magical. I wanted to see a theatre full of people all experiencing this magic of storytelling at the same time.”

The play is just 60-minutes long, with no interval, and features a cast of one actress, who plays ten different characters, including her swim coach, spirit guide, brother, parents and more. But for a play where water is so central, there is no physical water onstage, nor crude imitation of anyone trying to learn to swim.

“We had many conversations around how to capture water on stage,” says Rebecca. “Our director and dramaturg, Emma Jude Harris, did such a beautiful job of capturing the abstraction of movement in water, combined with some spectacular lighting and sound design from our powerhouse of a creative team. It’s about the abstract essence of being underwater, so you don’t miss seeing her pretending to do breaststroke.”

The line between magic, spirituality and human experience is core to the storytelling of How I Learned to Swim, as are some of the stories of Black aquatic myths and legends whose characters appear. It features Mami Wata and Lasirèn – deities from West Africa and Haiti – a spirit guide, and even a Black American underwater Atlantis-like mythic world.

Somebody’s hope is that the play opens the conversation around swimming becoming more accessible to the Black community. She has worked with the Black Swimming Association, having been horrified by some of their statistics around the disproportionate figures of drowning incidents among people of colour.

“97 per cent of Black adults in the UK either can’t swim or have only ever had one lesson, which I just find terrible,” she says. “For me, swimming is about survival (and socialising, having grown up in LA), and that’s true for Jamie, both literally and metaphorically. She is in such a broken place, her life is crumbling around her, and she needs to go on this journey to be okay.

“I’d always wanted to write a piece about Black people and swimming, because I’m fascinated by the perception and stereotypes out there, like the fact some people still think Black bones are too dense to swim, which is just wild,” she says. “These myths are so pervasive, but would Black history have so many of these water deities if they didn’t have a relationship with the water? No. I want this play to inspire Black people to analyse their own relationship with water and want to learn how to swim, because we all need to know how to survive in difficult waters.”

Photos by David Monteith-Hodge

How I Learned to Swim opens at London’s Brixton House Theatre on Monday 2 September, where it runs for two weeks before transferring to the Bristol Old Vic. To find out more or to purchase a ticket visit brixtonhouse.co.uk