For a century, the Newcastle Ocean Baths have been an egalitarian stage on which the city’s people have gathered, played and shared life’s moments.

A handful of the countless stories centred on the baths are about to take new shape in Meet Me at the Baths, a site-specific work of theatre from Newcastle’s Whale Chorus Theatre Company, directed by Janie Gibson and written by Ang Collins.

The Baths, its regular swimmers and its shifting daily rhythms will supply stage, subject and a cast of supporting players.

Performers Stephanie Rochet, Barney Donaghy, Jim Lawson and Katia Molino (foreground): Meet Me at the Baths. Photo © Lee Illfield 

For Gibson, the process has been about exploring the tideline between real life and performance.

“We’re not closing the space off to the public for the shows because it’s such an important community space,” she explains. “So there will be locals doing their laps and whatever while the actors, who are miked up, are stealthily performing. It’s almost like the audience is eavesdropping.”

Discovering what ‘performance’ means in that environment has been one of the more interesting challenges in rehearsals, Gibson says. “We found that if the actors do any theatre-style acting, it stands out. It looks weird! So we’ve developed a more cinematic acting style where actors blend in and wait to be discovered. Ideally, we’d like it so that for a a little while it’s hard for the audience to work out who’s an actor and who’s a local just there for a swim.”

Collins and Gibson have been developing the work through months of research and community conversations. They set up storyboards at the Baths, paddled out to meet the “tea bag ladies” bobbing in floral swim caps, and were welcomed into a web of regulars and rituals. Out of this material they’ve crafted a mosaic of love stories, comic mishaps, moments of grief, tales of healing.

Rather than tell a linear narrative, the show relies on theatrical sleight of hand to knit vignettes spanning decades together. Four actors play many roles, slipping between characters. Between episodes, music and sound design by composer Liesl Pieterse swells to create a sense of continuity.

“The biggest challenge for us has been what to leave out,” Collins says. “We kept collecting stories that were larger than life, stranger than fiction. Honestly, we could make sequels for years.”

One of the yarns screams ‘classic’.

Collins and Gibson spoke to a couple of blokes in their seventies, regulars at the Baths for more than 50 years. They used to help the old caretaker, Collins explains. “So one day they were draining the Baths, and this guy, who was new in town, wanted to keep doing his laps. And so they said, okay, you keep doing your laps in the far end. It drains slowly. You’ll be right.”

“But then he actually got sucked out the drain through to the rocks. These guys were thinking going through the tunnel would have been like going through a thousand cheese graters. They were ready for the worst. They ran up to the guy lying there and said, ‘You right, mate? Need your last rites?’ Turns out he didn’t have a scratch on him – and that he was the new Anglican vicar.”

Performers Jim Lawson, Katia Molino Stephanie Rochet and Barney Donaghy: Photo © Lee Illfield 

Newcastle’s Ocean Baths date back to the early years of the 20th century, though they weren’t formally opened until the 1920s. Since then, Novocastrians have flocked there to learn to swim, to exercise, flirt, or to cool off after work.

In the show, the Baths complex is more than backdrop, it is a collaborator. The production team has had to account for the fact that conditions shift daily: tides, swimmers, seagulls, even the light. “It’s different every day. But that’s part of the joy,” says Gibson.”

“When you put on the headphones the place suddenly transforms. Even the ordinary things, people stretching, chatting, slipping into the water, become part of the show.”

Meet Me at the Baths is performed at 11am and 2pm from 27 September – 4 October at Newcastle Oceans Baths. Part of the 2025 New Annual festival.