Adrian Howells on his new National Theatre of Scotland production ‘Lifeguard’

HAVING spent years doing one-to-one shows, Adrian Howells is taking the plunge with a bigger audience while staying intimate. By Susan Mansfield

When I’m admitted to Adrian Howells’ rehearsal room, he’s drying himself off with a towel and pulling on a T-shirt. We’re in a swimming pool, the teaching pool at Govanhill Swimming Baths, where Lifeguard, his new work for National Theatre of Scotland, has been made and will be performed.

Fortunately, Howells is one of those amphibious types who has no problem spending all day in a swimming pool. He remembers childhood summers at holiday camps, every day spent in the pool, reluctantly leaving the water only to eat and sleep. Even an interview feels like a bit of a wrench. “There are guidelines about how long you should be rehearsing in a chlorinated pool,” he says. “I just don’t care, because I love being in it so much. I love being in water. I feel like I’m almost fatally attracted to it. When I see a swimming pool, or a lake, or I’m by the sea, I have such a strong urge to jump into it. I love having a bath or a shower, I love splashing my face with water, I love the rain.”

Since he learned to swim at the age of seven, water has figured significantly in his life. It has also been an important part of his work as a performance artist. In Foot Washing for the Sole, he washed and massaged tired feet. In Salon Adrienne, she (his female alter-ego) washed people’s hair. In The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding, performed on the Edinburgh Fringe last year, he bathed his solo audience member, fed and cuddled them. “I think I got to a point where there was some sense of where do I go now? So it’s interesting for me now to find myself in a really big pool of water, not immersing anyone else, but immersing myself.”

Which brings us to this place, the teaching pool of Govanhill Swimming Baths, disused since the baths were closed by Glasgow City Council 11 years ago, and now refurbished thanks to £25,000 from the National Theatre of Scotland. The local community, which fought the closure of the baths and has been campaigning ever since to reopen them, are aiming to raise the £12 million necessary to refurbish the two larger pools and transform the building into a community Health and Wellbeing Centre.

Howells first saw inside the building when he was helping with a creative learning project for the Arches. Seeing the teaching pool – even with moss growing between the tiles and ivy invading from the storeroom, he had “a bingo moment”. “I just thought, ‘Oh my god, I want to do a show in this very location, I could really create a piece of work here.’”

He also knew, immediately, that this show would not be one-to-one theatre, the field in which he has specialised for the past ten years, this would have a larger audience. “I was very struck by how this building was being maintained, with absolute devotion, by the Govanhill Baths Trust, a community within a community. I felt it was absolutely right that the piece should be for a community.”

Howells and I converse in folding chairs, perched on the edge of the pool. The pool atmosphere is all-pervasive, the smell of chlorine, the damp warmth. When I listen to the recording of the interview, the voices even sound different because of the presence of the water. It’s a powerful place to make site-specific theatre, but Howells tends to ask his audience for a little more than that. They’ll begin by changing into swimming costumes, watch the show in T-shirts and towels, and – if they wish – join him in the pool at the end.

The involvement of National Theatre of Scotland in the project not only refurbished the pool (which will be used by the community after the show), it gave Howells a year to work on his ideas about water and swimming. “We have this love-hate relationship with water, because it is something that has the capacity to promote unbridled joy and pleasure, but it also has the capacity to take away life. It’s also very tightly regulated, even though it’s something where you might experience a sense of abandonment. I think that’s why there is such an increase in the popularity of open- water swimming, people are reacting to these very controlled, sanitised spaces.

“I think swimming is really important, not just because it’s a fantastic form of exercise, but I think it gives you space and opportunity to connect more deeply with yourself. It doesn’t just do something for you physically, it does something for you emotionally and psychologically. We are all changed by being in water.”

NTS backing also enabled him to recruit a creative team: artists Minty Donald and Nick Miller, composer Nichola Scrutton, lighting designer Mike Brookes, playwright Rob Drummond as dramaturg, movement specialist Jane Mason and – perhaps most surprisingly – a fellow performer, dancer Ira Mandela Siobhan. “It’s a big change for me because for the last ten years I’ve done solo work, but it became apparent very quickly that I didn’t want to perform on my own. I also knew that the other person was going to be someone who was very skilled in movement. There’s very much the sense of this being more like a dance piece. We’re looking at how narrative can be communicated in a less linear fashion, that it is sometimes about understanding something through a mood or an emotion or an atmosphere.”

Siobhan and Howells take on the roles of “swimmer” and “lifeguard” in the loose narrative, exploring questions of safety and risk, jealousy and competitiveness, of what happens when a pupil out-performs a teacher. The atmosphere of the pool is adding its own resonances. “The part this space plays in all of this is completely key,” says Howells. “Just the smell of the chlorine, the act of going into a cubicle to change, will trigger memories for people. A lot of the work is done for you by this very particular environment.” Lifeguard promises to be multi-sensory theatre in the fullest sense. You are likely to get splashed, and – if you choose – dip more than a toe in the water.

• Lifeguard is at Govanhill Baths, Glasgow, tomorrow until 27 October. www.nationaltheatrescotland.com