by Anita La Selva
There’s a question that has intrigued and provoked me over my career as an artist: How does one begin to create a piece for the theatre that does not follow a traditional narrative consisting of plot, characters, and a clear “beginning, middle, and end”? How can a combination of text, movement, video, and sound come together to create an impactful non-linear story that can resonate with audiences? For me, I always start with a particular inspiration – an image, a sound, an experience – or perhaps something I had seen or read somewhere that piqued my curiosity.
With the play 12 Litres 8800 Steps, it started with something very personal as I had just come through years of wrestling with my partner’s alcohol addiction and subsequent death. I was broken, exhausted, and at a loss. My self-esteem was at an all-time low; my body completely shattered from lack of sleep due to worrying and pushing myself too hard.
In an effort to heal myself, I attended an Equine Therapy weekend. Once there, I encountered a Horse who showed me – despite all this grief, loss, and exhaustion – that I had to keep moving no matter what. So, I took up walking 1-2 hours a day to process all that I had been through. At this point, I had no idea whether I would create anything again. I just wanted to heal myself.
As I walked, snatches of my recent experiences started coming back – images, sounds, memories, metaphors – and began rearranging themselves in my mind, rubbing up against one another in unusual ways. I made notes of key images and ideas that kept returning during my walks: hospital sounds, horse images, snatches of conversations, childhood memories, the panic and anxiety – metaphors connected to how I was feeling at the time as well as the sense that I was always losing control. Before long, I had a substantial list which suggested that I might be leaning towards creating a theatre piece about coping with my partner’s addiction and horses. Okay… I had a couple of themes! At this point, I had no idea of how everything was going to come together, but – as I do when I create work like this – I always start with the clearest images and continuously experiment with how I can bring them to life, trusting that if I build a strong foundation then the rest will slowly begin to reveal itself.
I started to dream what a piece like this might feel like, and scenes started to emerge: some had dramatic text, others appeared to be evolving as movement pieces; some were simply intense images that were burned into my memory. Flashes of video ideas started coming up as I began imagining the worlds that I was dealing with. I knew there needed to be multiple worlds: an urban world, a hospital world – maybe a dream world. Other worlds would begin to emerge later. I followed my instincts. I started with two characters: A Woman and A Horse.
I had no funding for the piece, but I assembled and personally funded a small team to work in studio with me: a movement specialist/actor to take on the Horse (Brad Cook); a dramaturg (Martin Julien); and, an outside eye/assistant (Maria Paula Carreño- Martínez) to document and film all of our explorations. Brad Cook and I spent hours just playing and improvising as The Woman and The Horse. We found moments, sequences – these laid the foundation for this primary relationship which would evolve and grow throughout the piece. I then brought in ideas for the Woman and wrote various texts to describe her emotional state of being and her repetitive daily routine that I knew I wanted to somehow physicalize. Certain sounds kept replaying in my head, and I started exploring how sound could support the work. Step by step, additional key scenes were created and…I had laid the foundation for the piece! We subsequently presented 25 minutes of material at Aluna Theatre’s CAMINOS 2023 Festival of New Works in Progress.
This was enough to help me apply for development money. Once I had received various arts council funding, I was able to plan a three-week workshop where I added a choreographer (Victoria Mata Soledad) and a Scenographer (Trevor Schwellnus) to the team. Victoria would work with the movement and choreographic ideas we had been experimenting with and begin to shape them into cleaner more sophisticated sequences – adding ideas and inspirations of her own.
Having a scenographer in the room was a game changer. Trevor and I would have many conversations throughout the process about lighting, projections, and the scenic world of the piece. Trevor would listen and then interpret what I had shared and then come up with ideas and offerings that began to support the non-traditional narrative that was emerging. What was affirmed was that the key to using video projections was to develop them “in studio” alongside everything else, and to not just slap them on at the end. Hence, we started incorporating ideas for projection early on in the process.
In the subsequent three workshops that took place over a two-year period we introduced sound design (Thomas Ryder Payne) and brought in another outside eye (Beatriz Pizano) who would eventually become the co-director of the piece with me (because I was also playing The Woman). I would write scenes and bring in sketches for movement ideas I wanted to explore and then we, as a team, would develop them within the studio process of creation. Whenever I introduced longer scenes with narrative text, we played with a myriad of ways in which we could compellingly present these spoken sequences – including a central, key scene of me as the Woman performing a durational task while speaking directly to the audience. As the play grew and evolved, and more sequences were introduced, some ideas we left behind and others stayed.
The process was truly a collaborative one with each artist contributing in the room, sharing ideas and working together as a team to bring the material and the ideas to life. It was an iterative process that took place over three years with multiple workshops and drafts of the script. As I write this, we are in production for 12 Litres 8800 Steps along with additional team members Daniel Tessy (co-sound designer) and both Teresa Przyzblyski and Monica Viani (costume and mask designers). All the original artists have stayed connected to the piece, in some way, throughout its development. For me – as a creator – this has been one of the greatest gifts. Interdisciplinary creation takes time: a lot of time – and a team, like this one, that you can trust with your life. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
12 Litres 8800 Steps is playing at the Factory Theatre on May 1 to 17, 2026, produced by the Unbridled Theatre Collective and Aluna Theatre. Tickets are available at factorytheatre.ca.
© Anita La Selva, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
