Mourning Has Broken

Displaced by Hurricane Katrina, EgoPo lets Beckett be their guide to Philly greatness.

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Nov 3, 2009

[ theater ]

Neal Santos Rinse and Repeat: J. Center and Ann Gundersheimer star in Samuel Beckett's post-apocalyptic comedy, Endgame. In the original, the legless parents live in trash cans; In EgoPo's interpretation, a washer/dryer.

EgoPo calls itself "classic theatre on the edge." But in August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed their home base at New Orleans' Jewel Theatre, and most of the company members' houses, the theater almost fell off the edge.

Serendipitously, EgoPo was performing The Maids X 2 in Philadelphia's Fringe Festival at the time. Aided by donations from the Philly theater community, founder Lane Savadove, a Haverford College graduate, decided to settle here. After an acclaimed production of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening in 2007 and seasons devoted to Tennessee Williams and expressionist theater, EgoPo is riding a Samuel Beckett wave with an '09 Fringe revival of their adaptation of the late prose work Company; a production of Endgame, currently on stage at St. Stephen's Theater; a March 2010 staging of Waiting for Godot; and a winter-spring reading series of Beckett short works.

"I think we are nearing the time when we get to be simply a Philadelphia theater, as opposed to a transplanted New Orleans company," says Savadove about their Katrina adventure. "It will be incredibly freeing when this occurs." True, but it's still a hell of a story.

"Katrina did change my vision for the company," he admits. "The intensity of the work and stress that was required to rebuild has made me strive harder for a stable center. If we are going to do the work we are capable of, we need to know that we are in a safe environment — not worried about making it to the end of the fiscal year."

At the same time, he admits, "having to start over has made me impatient; I want us to create the work we want to create now."

That ambition inspired the current Beckett season, hardly a guaranteed box-office hit by anyone's imagining, but a logical extension of EgoPo's Company success and Savadove's direction of 12 other Beckett plays in his 20-year career.

"During times of stress," Savadove says, "we turn to what feels like home. For EgoPo, this has always been Beckett. Beckett allows you to go into the rehearsal room and focus purely on art without the distractions that more elaborate productions might require. Beckett allows us to focus on the pure and essential part of theater: a director, actors and a script."

Savadove's Endgame aspires to much more, transplanting the 1957 play from the playwright's "Bare interior. Gray light" to a '70s New Jersey basement filled with a quarter-century's family detritus. Blind, chair-bound Hamm (Ed Swidey) is served by dumpy, nearsighted Clov (EgoPo associate producer Doug Greene) while his legless parents (J. Center and Ann Gundersheimer) live not in trash cans, but a washer and dryer. Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" sets the ironic tone of this post-apocalyptic dark comedy.

"I've been asked many times if I thought Beckett would approve of our version of Endgame," says Savadove about the late playwright's notorious legal actions against productions that strayed from his vision. "From my knowledge of other productions, his own direction of his plays, and his approval of our other productions of his work, I think that he would be very pleased that we are able to speak to an American audience without changing a single word or stage direction."

Savadove avoids blind reverence, noting that "when approaching Endgame, each director must decide when and where Hamm's room is set. If specific choices are not made, the play will float out there in an absurdist world and lose emotional impact." In fact, Savadove doesn't consider Beckett absurdist at all: "The term allows a cast, director and design team to give up on specific meaning and settle for the answer, 'It's just a bizarre reality.' I think every line, every word, every movement in Beckett is a purposeful communication."

This certainly showed in Company, which imagined each audience member as the central character — blindfolded, reclining, guided by an "angel" — in his or her final moments, the abstract idea of slipping from life made real and personal.

"The most important influence of the relocation," says Savadove about EgoPo's new home, "has been my view of the Philadelphia theater community. All of these amazingly generous local actors, directors, designers and producers helped us both financially and emotionally to restart our lives. I wouldn't be in theater anymore if not for this community."

(mark.cofta@citypaper.net)

Endgame runs through Nov. 15, $30, St. Stephen's Theater, 923 Ludlow St., 215-552-8773, egopo.org.

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