Staging A Musical In A Working Swimming Pool Onstage

When you think of Flint, Michigan, the first thing you think of is water. Or rather, the 2014 water crisis which made the water in the city undrinkable for many residents, until 2020. But for director Michael Lluberes, who has lived in Flint for six years and runs the Flint Repertory Theatre, the city is more than that catastrophe. So, when he came up with the idea to do Stephen Schwartz’s musical Godspell and set it in a working swimming pool, with actors splashing around—it felt like a natural fit for Flint.

“Flint has this really complicated history and relationship with water. So I thought it could potentially be really beautiful and healing and magical to do something joyful in water,” he explains. “That’s part of what led me to do it—to show the world, to show the country that Flint is actually a beautiful place, and that the water is just fine. Dive in.”

And audiences are. Flint Rep is a young theatre, just six years old, with a modest $1.2 million operating budget. But Godspell has been its most successful production so far—its initial six-week run sold out and the show extended by two weeks to November 3. And it has attracted theatre lovers far and wide. “People are coming from all over to see it, which is crazy,” marvels Lluberes. “They’re driving, like, 10 hours. I mean, it’s been overwhelming, the response.” Flint Rep is even in talks with bigger theatres for an encore engagement.

To clarify: No, this production of Schwartz’s musical, based on the Gospel of Matthew, is not site-specific. Flint Rep is not doing it at a local pool. They’re doing it on a stage, in a real-working pool. The audiences sing, dance, and exalt about Jesus Christ while in water. The front row is the splash zone, or as Lluberes jovially puts it, it’s a baptism zone.

“The show starts with this baptism—John baptizes Jesus,” he explains. “So my thought was, what if the whole thing were a baptism? What if the whole thing were in water? And it became this theatrical baptism for the audience?”

And for the actors as well. When Lluberes was casting for the show, he asked the actors if they were comfortable performing for two hours in water. One of the actors, Gia Mae Chessa (who sings the rollicking solo “Bless the Lord”) is a former lifeguard. Talk about transferable skills.

“They have to be these quadruple threats: Singers, yeah, actors, dancers, and swimmers,” he says. Granted, there’s not much swimming in the show since the pool is four feet deep. But the cast rehearsed in a public pool at the YMCA of Greater Flint, so they could strengthen their limbs so they can dance underwater, and train their lungs so they can dive underwater and then sing when they come up. They also learned to work with the props—which are all pool themed: Pool noodles act as canes, colorful diving rings become money, and there’s numbers that use buckets, squirt guns, floaties, and rubber duckies.

As Lluberes describes it, “We do the Good Samaritan story using the rubber ducky as a little puppet show. The duckies light up. I just really wanted it to be fun and to be silly, and the audience to have a belly laugh. And then hopefully, it goes somewhere transformational and special and beautiful.”

As for the pool itself, Flint Rep actually purchased a working above ground swimming pool that’s 16 feet in diameter. The pool also heats so the actors can stay comfortable. “It’s a self-cleaning pool,” says Lluberes. “We’re constantly cleaning it and skimming it, and it’s constantly monitored for the temperature.” Lluberes credits the four-person stage management team who are in charge of pool upkeep: “They make it safe, they clean it, they dry it off at intermission. They put a cover on it. We’ve invested in industrial dehumidifiers rather. It’s been crazy!” He then laughs, “We’re doing the show, but we’re also running a pool.”

On the stage, the platform the pool is placed on looks like tile but it’s actually treated wood so the actors don’t slip when they have to get out. To keep the cast comfortable, the temperature at the theatre is slightly warmer than it would normally be. On the tech side, the actors are not mic-ed—instead the sound is captured through hanging choir mics.

Though while the cast practiced hard at performing in the water, how do they stay healthy with all that moisture, not to mention the chlorine? “Lots of moisturizer,” answers Lluberes. “And ear plugs, and they drink electrolytes.”

Aside from potential encore engagements, Lluberes isn’t sure what Flint Rep will do with the pool after they close the show (joking “We’ll have staff meetings in the pool”). But for him, this six-week run has exceeded his expectations—both for showcasing how Flint has persevered and grown after the water crisis, and for bringing joy to audiences.

The musical may be called Godspell,but to Lluberes, the real church is theatre. “The show was never a show about religion,” he says. “I’m culturally Jewish, I’m not religious at all. It’s not a show about religion. It really isn’t. It’s about community. It’s about a group of disparate people who come together and through telling stories, they form this community. And that’s what the theatre is.” He then adds, “It’s just fun, too. What could be more fun than the actors splashing and singing and dancing this amazing score in water?”