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Equine therapy centre in Tottenham inspires playwright to document her journey

April 16, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

When playwright Anita La Selva lost her partner of many years to alcoholism, she began searching for a way to work through her grief.

She was introduced to Horse Spirit Connection in Tottenham.

This centre partners individuals with horses that act therapeutically with visitors.

Anita connected with Spirit Walker, a thoroughbred horse at the equine centre. The results of the interaction worked so well that it inspired Anita to begin work on a play about her experience.

After starting the play, things went awry during the pandemic, and she shifted focus to make a short film instead. The film went on to screen at 18 international film festivals.

“Once the pandemic was over, I wanted to continue and workshop it, and continue to develop it as a play, which is what I have been doing over the past three years,” Anita explained.

Anita is an accomplished actor, director, creator, and playwright, and is active in the theatre industry.

She admits getting the play up and running is a difficult process, as there is so much involved in putting a production together.

Her play, titled “12 Litres 8800 Steps,” is about the toll that addiction places on caregivers and family and her own healing experience with equine therapy.

The play features two actors. Anita plays a version of herself on stage, and her character can also be described as her alter ego.

In the role of the horse Spirit Walker, Brad Cook brings a horse to life on stage by costume, mask, and movement.

This isn’t your typical play of actors repeating dialogue on a stage. Anita prefers to refer to her work as ‘pieces.’

“I’m not a linear playwright,” Anita explained. “I call myself more of a creator than a playwright, in the sense that I don’t write scripts with people having conversations. My pieces are inter-disciplinary, meaning they have movement, choreography, and dance. They have video, sometimes music and sound.”

“12 Litres 8800 Steps” doesn’t take place at a single time. The action takes place at different times in Anita’s life.

“The story is told in a series of vignettes that jump through time, from past to present,” Anita said. “It includes my childhood and my adulthood – it jumps around. I jump to some flashback to myself and my partner, and then to conversations I wish I could have had. I put it together very much like a collage rather than a straight narrative.”

The result is a production that blends surrealism with reality and transcends time through one person’s journey through grief and redemption.

12 Litres 8800 Steps will be performed at the Factory Theatre in Toronto from May 1 to 17. 

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