Anita La Selva has directed some of the best theatre I’ve ever seen- bold, creative, demanding work that left a lasting impact. That fact is the complicating, heartbreaking, contextualizing background to 12 Litres 8800 Steps, her autobiographical solo show currently on stage in the Factory mainspace. The play tells the devastating personal story that, presumably unknown to the audiences of the aforementioned art, was playing out behind the scenes as she shepherded that work. It’s a brutal private battle and La Selva tells the story with bold clarity. The narrative is a little clouded by the therapy horse angle (puppeteer Brad Cook joins La Selva onstage playing a horse) which isn’t woven into the structure seamlessly enough to function as an anchor but La Selva’s story, and its greater context, is so compelling that there is most certainly a core here that could be polished into something great.

Janet McMordie is a real life doctor who balances that all-consuming life with a passion for theatre-making. That seems impossible but a solo performance of Rosamund Small’s dramatic monologue Vitals (currently playing in the Factory’s Studio Theatre) is the perfect vehicle. Based on the stories of real life paramedic Kaleigh O’Brien, Vitals benefits greatly from the lack of professional smoothness that might otherwise be considered a flaw in McMordie’s performance style. She’s practical, technical, and immensely credible as a workman life-saver. There are some dramaturgical shifts towards the end of the piece that don’t really work for me and the accompanying melodrama detracts from the built in realism of McMordie’s performance but, understood as a passion project more than a professional production, this is an extremely worthy incarnation of a popular local text.