A girl meets an animal.
For this meeting to succeed, both the beast and the human have to lose their own resistances, abandon their own positions, cages and fears. They will have to rise unveiled, naked, for a pure confrontation, where reciprocal trust, or at least the possibility to build one, is possible.
The Maiden comes from a dark world of violence and abuse with preys and predators. And she comes to propose a new kind of language, new words which do not need iron bites, reins, coercion and opposition. The Girl doesn’t embody a wisdom, nor does she possess a knowledge; she’s is searching for a technique, an art, to face the indomitable wildness. This is an uncontaminated coming together between human and animal, where the Mare has to accept the path indicated by the Girl and the Girl has to turn into a horse, until Mare and Maiden become one.

This is the “join up”.

Yoga, yoke, gioco (the Italian word for game), giumenta (Italian for mare),and the English verbs to coniugate and to join they all  share the same linguistic matrix: *jeug- , *zug-, *yug-, to unify, to put and keep together, to connect.

The Girl was born from our imagination, while studying Aeschylus as one of the female figures who are depicted as vanishing towards the extreme sides of the Tantalides myth: Hippodamias and Crisotemis, past and future. If Crisotemis, sister of Orestes, Elektra and Iphigenia, appears as a survivor at the very end of the tragedy, mute witness of the vortex, Hippodamias, positioned at the beginning of the descent,  seems the key to a different  path. The parastasi of the eastern pediment of  Zeus’ temple in Olympia preserves the myth, eternally depicting the instant before the cursed competition between Enomao and Pelope takes place. The cruel Enomao rises next to Zeus; Pelope is on the other side. Zeus in the middle suspends the scene with his immovable powerful presence: he does not give victory to one or the other. Pelope will win, but his victory will give fruit to evil. He will win with deception and violence using the curse of Myrtilus, which will affect all the descendents who will follow him. Next to the heroes in this grave mythological depiction there is Hippodamias, the tamer of horses and object of the competition. Another Hippodamias is, also portrayed in the center of the scene at the western pediment of the same temple: this Hippodamias is Piritoo’s bride, contended by Lapiths and Centaurs. Another presence of a god - this time Apollo - suspends the moment with his outspread arm and open palm, braking the irrationality and the chaos. However, the chaos is not necessarily represented, as we are tempted to think, by the monstrous centaurs: liminal beings, half men, half horses. The chaos is the abyss, the battle itself. The divine doesn't take part nor support one side or the other, but rather, appears to reveal the clash, the struggle, the continuous agony. Which means the divine manifests itself inside the tension between opposing strengths.

Our way of writing and creating the scene draws from the myth, with the principal aim being an original mythopoetic effect. Our horse tamer is not simply the object of battle in a tale; rather, she testifies the internal struggle of man facing nature and wildness. She proposes a historically new encounter with the animal. At least, this encounter is new for our time: it does not recall violence yet intimately illustrates the contrasts of wildness.

The human agony, of which the myth is a metaphor, is represented here for what it is: one confronted with the self, with their choices, with their fears, with the other, with the beast and with the divine. The bare relationship between man and animal is revealed in a mythical rather than mythological dimension. Nevertheless it will not be possible for the public in its stance as voyeur, of peeping-tom (Lady Godiva comes to mind), to not be spectators of the relationship unraveling in front of their eyes. The symbolic language used to evoke the relationship will allow them to see the iconographic, historical, literary aspects of their knowledge. Each and every spectator will be the intelligent witness of the birth of a new myth.

The theatrical idea which we are interested in lies wholly in the folds of this relationship, within the subtextual non-verbal dialogue. The animal presence, by itself not such an original element in the contemporary theatrical search, is seen here as an active element of the dialogue. It creates its existence and does not suffer the human imposition on the stage. It bears it in the same way that the human counterpart faces the animal unforeseen.

The approach to the animal uses an original sequence of steps, which continues to be developed with a team of equestrian instructors. However if the sequence is known, the animal responses are not. It is in the authentic and every time, new, relationship among the two actors that is unraveled in front of the eyes of the public - with different results of love, exclusion, clashes, attraction, and rejection each time- that lies the theatrical significance we are searching for. The actress does not usually ride and this is her first direct experience with horses. The actors' training with the horses is conducted according to the philosophy and the method of the Join Up, by the instructors of the Equestrian Center. PratoVerde of St. Zenone degli Ezzelini (TV), Italy.