April 19–26, 2001

arts picks| theater

Lost Soles

"Writing a show backwards" may sound like a sure way to handicap a theater production from the start. Yet it’s become Thaddeus Phillips’ euphemism for the way that Lost Soles, his lively magnum opus which appeared at the Philadelphia Fringe last year, developed. It began with a journey. Traveling illegally to Cuba ("via Canada") with an idea for a one-man show about a dancer who "loses himself" there, Phillips spent two weeks "filming everything I saw," and tap-dancing — on walls, beside the sea, everywhere imaginable. Yet, on his return, he had no more than an aesthetic — the resourceful, passionate Cuban way of life — and the Fringe performance beckoned, only two weeks away.

While he rose to the challenge, presenting a "rough version" of the story, which traces a dancer’s fugitive existence after a disastrous performance in Carnegie Hall, he now regards those first attempts as "an experiment, on stage." A five-week run at La MaMa in New York served, in a topsy-turvy way, as in-depth rehearsal time, and he resolutely refers to this month’s opening at Christ Church as Lost Soles’ "debut."

Along the way, the dance elements have grown to encompass "pretty much the history of tap," while the backdrop has sprouted into a full cityscape, with room for bicycles and telephone poles. Of the scale, Phillips says it has remained broad: "A hotel can be shown with only a handkerchief for a pillow, but for every microcosmic scene, there’s a macrocosmic theme."

Only now, he feels, does the production reflect what fascinated him to start with. "The Cuban resourcefulness with minimal supplies is what makes their world so colorful and mysterious. I’m still trying to work out all the mystery in this story, too."

—Juliet Fletcher

April 19-May 13, Christ Church, 115 Arch St., 215-413-2036.