Whisper Walk Alexandra Silber on Turning Edinburgh’s Streets into a Stage for Memory and Intimacy

As a part of Dutch Kills Theater Company’s AFOOT walking tour series, which premiered at Adelaide Fringe in 2024, Whisper Walk features confessional stories, unuttered truths and personal memories whispered through headphones in a documentary-style walking tour through Edinburgh.

We spoke with the writer behind Whisper Walk, Alexandra Silber, a Grammy-nominated artist based in New York, ahead of the show's UK premiere at Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year.

What inspired you to bring this very intimate experience to the streets of Edinburgh?

I’ve always believed that cities hold stories the way stones absorb the sun—quietly, without fanfare, and with astonishing depth. Every city is a kind of living memory, and Edinburgh in particular is a place where history and emotion seem to cling to the very brickwork (enhanced by the pilgrimage made every August by artists from around the world). I wanted to create an experience that honored that feeling—something wildly intimate, reflective, and a little bit magical. So much of life happens in the in-between spaces: park benches, stairwells, quiet streets. I wanted to remind people that small, tender moments and humble places can carry as much meaning as the grand ones.

(Also, as someone who can get emotionally wrecked just by overhearing strangers in a café, this project felt somewhat inevitable. I essentially turned empathic eavesdropping into art?) 

All in all, sometimes the most theatrical thing we can do is stop for five minutes, listen, and feel something

How did you select the different spots for the walking tour?

I thought of it a bit like assembling a mixtape—or maybe a love letter. I wanted the locations to feel varied, but together, to form a cohesive emotional journey. I also wanted to create something that could comfortably unfold in about an hour, right in the heart of town. (And frankly, I needed to be realistic about how far people can walk without a snack, because I too am a fragile, snack-dependent organism who starts imagining escape routes when hungry, so I wanted to spare others that particular anxiety.)

The places I chose are the kinds of spots you might not notice unless you were looking. Corners. Hidden benches. A stretch of alleyway. The kind of places where real life actually happens—where people fall in and out of love, make big decisions, cry, laugh, change course. I wanted the audience to feel like they were brushing up against something private but universal. Because we’ve all had those moments, haven’t we? Where a random street corner somehow becomes part of the architecture of your heart.

What was the process and timeline like for creating this piece?

I’ve been living inside AFOOT since the summer of 2023, and the Edinburgh component has been gently taking shape since March of 2025. But honestly, the truth is: I’ve been collecting these stories my entire life.

Most things I do take  twice as long as planned, three times as many drafts, a humiliating number of panic walks around the block, and at least one cry in a Pret A Manger. But Whisper Walk was not like that at all. It emerged organically from the listening part of my psyche, and I was less the writer-as-creator and more the writer-as-servant. I was just “the arm that held the pencil.” Humbling.

I’m always listening—half as a writer, half as a human being who is endlessly curious about how people live and what makes them who they are. Some of the moments in this piece are pulled from real life. Others are pure invention. Most are somewhere in between. My process is less like building and more like gathering: little scraps of heartbreak, humor, longing, and transformation, stitched together until they start to hum with meaning. It’s slow. And worth it.

The show runs from 10am to 11pm—how different do you think it will feel in the morning versus the evening?

Oh, completely different. I think the morning performances will carry a softness—like fresh air and new chances. There’s something hopeful about starting your day by walking, by reflecting, by noticing things.

The evening, though—that’s when everything sharpens. Darkness always adds a bit of mystery, a bit of ache. I think by nightfall the city itself changes shape, and people carry the weight of their day in their bodies as they move through the streets. The stories might land differently depending on how much you’ve already lived that particular day. Which I kind of love. Because life, like theatre, is never the same twice.That said, I suspect the morning walkers will imagine their whole lives ahead of them, and the evening walkers will—like me—be wondering whether there’s still time to change theirs.

If you could bring this Whisper Walk experience anywhere else in the world, where would it be?

City wise I would be thrilled to bring this piece to as many major world cities as possible. My dream would be to have Whisper Walk exist in a “wherever you go” not unlike the walking tours one might download on Trip Advisor for a city holiday. The first city I would start with would be my hometown of Detroit, Michigan— a city of enormous innovation, culture, artistic expression, emotion, loss, devastation, civil rights history, and human resilience.

But my real dream would actually be to explore relatively small and remote places, create an experience of real solitude and specialness with these rarely-observed sacred locations in small towns or villages. The remoteness of a place makes it no less potent to critical memories.

What's one everyday object or location from your own life that holds a surprisingly powerful memory—and why?

For me, it’s The Palace Theatre in London. Exactly twenty years ago this summer, I made my West End debut there in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White. It was also my professional debut, which sounds terribly grand now, but at the time I was 22 years old—barely American-legal to toast with Champagne—and hadn’t even graduated from drama school yet.

That night, stepping onto that stage, I was made of equal parts terror, astonishment, and corset. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. (I mean, I did, technically. I knew my lines. I hit my marks. I sang the songs. But inside? Inside I was mostly thinking: Is this real? How is this real? What the hell is happening? And also… will I ever stop sweating?)I didn’t know then that that building—this beautiful, creaky, history-soaked theatre—would become something like ground zero for me. The site of my greatest childhood dream, yes, but also the place where that childhood ended. Where I crossed, quite without warning, into the early, painful beginnings of adulthood.

I grew up in that theatre. I learned that dreams-come-true are not endpoints, but doorways. I learned that grief doesn’t wait for the curtain to fall. And I learned—slowly, haltingly—that it’s not only “okay” for dreams to change, but essential.

That building will always be the geographic coordinates of my first becoming. A temple to a version of me who was, by turns, naïve, terrified, incandescent, and alive in a way I’m not sure I’ll ever feel again.

And yet: I wouldn’t go back.


The truth is, we don’t get to stay in our first dreams forever.
We’re meant to outgrow them.
We’re meant to keep becoming.

Whisper Walk was performed at Assembly George Square Studios, 2 - 25 Aug, every 60 mins from 10.00 until 23.00 (60 mins). For more information go to https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/whisper-walk