Isolation

A new play by Alistair M Keating

In Development

Isolation is an experimental object-theater and sound performance developed on a solo wilderness backpacking trip in Kern Canyon, California, August 2025. The performance encompasses my long time experience as a solo long-distance hiker and my wilderness conservation activism as an ecofeminist.

This non narrative play will use objects to depict how the Kern Canyon in Sequoia National Park changes between 6,000 and 11,900 feet; horses frolicking in fields, trout eating bugs, boots crunching on pine cones, snow on the final headwater lake. Awe for this pristine natural environment is a ubiquitous theme and my unexpected love of Golden Trout, California’s State Fish, which has over 100 years of conservation history. Golden Trout are designated heritage trout, having only lived in the same two streams for millennium.

A collage of stories from the trail will convey what it feels like to be a solo transgender hiker which is sometimes scary and sometimes beautiful; having experiences that one can have only when one is quiet and completely alone in the wilderness. Being utterly alone in the wilderness is both terrifying, exhilarating, joyful and soul lifting. It is a way to become intimate with nature and also requires a self resilience that some might call insane. I walked three days to a river valley that one can only get to by walking three days. In tandem, I would like to explore the very nature of creating solo theatrical work, as it is also terrifying, exhilarating, joyful and soul lifting. Does solo theatrical work take the same kind of insane self resilience? Is there a connection between the grit of solo backpacking and solo performance?