It's A Secret

Available for Touring

It’s A Secret is a one-to-one (…to-one-to-one-to-one…) verbal storytelling project that only participants can experience.

The project premiered on October 13th as part of Farout Festival at BASE Milano with 8 original stories being told to 41 people, who will then tell the story to 41 more, and so on. Only after participants have passed it on is the historical journey of their story revealed to them.

The stories exist in each of the participants and will become different in every instance, through shifting contexts, memory, language, imagination and time.
Our temptation is to want to know how the story has changed, what the “new” story is. But is this ever really possible? Do we ever hear the same thing as others? Is a common understanding what holds our social fabric together?

It’s A Secret plays with fiction and truth, secrecy and sharing, gifting and holding back, memory and invention. It invites us to consider the responsibility we have to tell each other stories. It invites us to think of the archive as a trace, not a monument. In a world where fake news proliferates at a much higher rate than truth, what do we choose to tell others?

Now available for booking.

It’s a Secret is tailored to each context, creating a platform for the stories that you or your community want to tell.

Please get in touch with Kaleider Producer, Jocelyn S Mills to bring It’s a Secret to your audiences: jocelyn@kaleider.com

How it works

In each context, writers or storytellers are commissioned to create stories that will be passed on.

Each time someone tells a story, they will also give wooden tablet, engraved with instructions, to the person they are telling the story to. The instructions tell the audience member that they need to find someone to tell the story to and pass the instructions on to, and so on.

Once the story has been passed on, participants are asked to scan a QR code, engraved on the tablet, and invited to write three short sentences. Once written, the unique and poetic journey that their story has been on is revealed to them.

If participants choose not to pass the story on then they have custody of the tablet, so there is a physical reminder that they are custodian of the story. They have to make a choice to pass the story and tablet on, or they might decide to destroy or dispose of the tablet, or it just hangs around in their possession, creating a weight of responsibility.