A new show, SALT, which has been inspired by the stories of people who swim in the sea all year round, is being performed outdoors in Salthill and Kinvara for this year’s Galway Theatre Festival. Incorporating poetry, light, a specially composed soundscape, a community choir and professional performers, it will be a homage to the sea and also a plea to protect it. JUDY MURPHY attends rehearsals in Kinvara where SALT’s creator and director Vanessa Earls tells her what’s involved.

“People say to me ‘the sea is in my blood, it’s in my DNA’. And that makes sense because we are 71 percent water and the world is 71 per cent ocean,” says Vanessa Earls.

It’s a Thursday night and Vanessa has just been co-directing a unique community choir at their twice-weekly rehearsals in Kinvara Community Centre.

Most members of this unique 70-strong choir, who come from different backgrounds and walks of life, swim in the sea all year round.

Their relationship with the ocean has inspired a new multi-disciplinary outdoor show, SALT, which will be performed in Kinvara and Salthill on April 30 and May 1 as part of this year’s Galway Theatre Festival.

Directed by Vanessa, this collaboration also involves composer Robbie Blake, poet Mary Madec, and a group of marine scientists.

The idea for SALT evolved during Covid, when Vanessa, a theatre-maker and behavioural coach, experienced the many benefits of sea swimming.

She became a year-round swimmer almost by accident, after moving back to Ireland in 2019.

“I didn’t swim much and a friend said, ‘you could learn in the sea’. So, I started to learn in Trácht with my friend during summer.”

Vanessa was ideally located in Kinvara, where she, her Irish-born husband and their family had settled when they moved back to this country in 2019, having spent some years in her birthplace of England.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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