Theatre – Extreme Swimmer: a portrait of a slightly mad young woman

Two women, two bodies facing their limits. The first is an athlete, a swimmer in icy waters; the second is battling illness in the corridors of a hospital. Through performance or suffering, they tell the story of a body that has become alien to them. Élise Vigier shares this intimate, sisterly journey with delicacy and modesty.


One chooses to push her body to the limit in a quest to surpass herself, through sporting challenge. The other fights against what is eating away at her body and disfiguring it. What they share is the experience of a body that has been weakened, diminished and transformed, as well as the fierce joy of feeling alive. By drawing parallels between these two life journeys – including her own – Élise Vigier speaks first and foremost of resilience. That of Marion Joffle, who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of five and swam across the English Channel twenty years later, before taking up the sport in cold water – below five degrees – without protection or assistance. That of the author, too, who speaks candidly about her breast cancer, and the shock and loneliness that accompanied it. The shift into another reality. Through an immersive, three-sided set design, the audience finds themselves in a hospital waiting room that transforms into a swimming pool or the ocean, or at times a boxing ring, where the two women share their stories: the moments of breath-holding, the uncertainties, the humour of the situations, the clash with the absurd… Set to an aquatic and underwater soundscape, the encounter between these two fighters is an extreme lesson in life.