Miss your friends and favourite places? Go for a bike ride with this immersive storytelling project

The new class of Canadian theatre-makers might be stuck at home like the rest of us, but the COVID-19 crisis won't stop them from doing what they love. So when the pandemic struck, the National Theatre School launched Art Apart. Its mission: support projects by emerging artists. Some 100 applicants from across the country have already received a $750 grant from Art Apart. And now, their shows are ready for an audience. Every week, CBC Arts will put the spotlight on one of these original works.

Name: Keshia Palm
Homebase: Toronto
Project: Make Me an Alleycat 

It's a personalized outdoor adventure involving Post Secret-style storytelling and one potentially epic bike ride.

So, how does it work?

After you've read all the instructions on the project website, recruit up to 10 of your closest pals. It's time to ask them for a major solid. What's a real-world place (within biking distance) that means a lot to them?

Get them to share the location, but also a story — a quick voice recording that explains why they love that street corner or (temporarily shuttered) dive bar enough to drag you out to see it. Once everyone's replied, forward the files to project creator Keshia Palm. She'll build you a Google map and a playlist — then send you on your way.

And since the spirit of this project is decidedly DIY, there's more than one way to make yourself an alleycat. Explore your map virtually, via Google Street View. Or let your friends off the hook and retrace someone else's journey. There are a couple of Toronto-based routes now available online, and more will be added as the project grows. (Participants can choose to make their itineraries public. Your call!) 

"Right now, we can't really share experiences with other people," says Palm. "So hearing a story told to you by someone else about something that is meaningful to them while we're there? It's like a little gift."

Below, Palm explains how the idea came together.

How did it start?

My birthday's at the beginning of April, and I really wanted to celebrate my birthday in a way that still created a sense of community, or had this feeling of bringing my friends together. I wanted to go for a bike ride, and I wanted to ask my pals to choose where I would go. When I was telling my close friend Claren Grosz (Pencil Kit Productions) about it, she was like, "Well, why don't you get them to tell you a story about the place that they send you to?" And that really was the start for this Make Me an Alleycat project.

How did a socially distant birthday party become a piece of theatre?

I think that there's SO MUCH content right now that's coming out in response to COVID-19, like lots of livestreams and live events, which are really exciting and important, but it can feel really overwhelming to me at times. There's just a lot to choose from. And also, it's a lot of time to be spending looking at a screen.

To be able to be outside hearing a story told to you by one of your loved ones? What a delightful thing to have right now.- Keshia Palm, creator of

For me, moving my body is really important and getting outside is really important. Also, connecting with my friends and family — that's something that's really grounded me during this time. And I think what makes Make Me an Alleycat so special is it really is an opportunity to share stories and share a moment with someone without being physically with them.

To be able to be outside hearing a story told to you by one of your loved ones? What a delightful thing to have right now.

I also feel that people's capacities are ever changing. Like, what I'm capable of doing on a day-to-day basis is wildly different. And I really wanted to create a project that could accommodate that flexibility that people need.

You could just listen to audio files in your bed. Maybe that's exactly what you need, is to hear your best friend and your mom telling a story about a place. Or maybe you go and do just one of those stops on one day, and it takes you 10 days to do the whole alleycat. Or you do it on Google Street View or you do it all at once and do a five-hour bike ride. I think that just having the opportunity to choose and decide how slow or how fast — how much you want to take on or how little — is really important right now for everything.

If we weren't living through a global pandemic, what would you be up to right now?

I work as a director and dramaturge and performer. I would have been doing a stage reading of a new play (Cooking for Grief) that would have been presented in the Factory Theatre extra space downstairs. We would have been in rehearsals, because it would have happened in May.

I also work for an arts organization called Generator, and I still do. But I would have been working in the office.

How has your experience developing this project compared to the theatre work you were doing pre-COVID?

At Generator, I work as an online content producer. And I find I spend a lot of time on social media and doing social media research, which is something I have never directly applied to my theatrical artmaking process just because theatre's live and I don't work on projects that mash those two worlds together. So this is sort of my first time thinking about theatrical experience, or embodied experience, from a social media or a user-experience lens.

When we're on the other side of this, how do you think your approach to theatre might be different?

This COVID-19 experience has really expanded our need for accessibility.

In my project, I'm accommodating people's different capacities, both physically and emotionally. [I'm] having a lot of flexibility around how any individual can experience the project and have it still be fulsome. And I hope that we carry that forward in theatre-making after this is over.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

To explore Make Me An Alleycat, visit keshiapalm.com/makemeanalleycat.

CBC Arts understands that this is an incredibly difficult time for artists and arts organizations across this country. We will do our best to provide valuable information, share inspiring stories of communities rising up and make us all feel as (virtually) connected as possible as we get through this together. If there's something you think we should be talking about, let us know by emailing us at cbcarts@cbc.ca. See more of our COVID-related coverage here.