Hell was sitting on Lane Savadove’s bookshelf for years.

Savadove, artistic director of Philadelphia’s EgoPo Classic Theatre, has adapted, with EgoPo actor Ross Beschler, the Henri Barbusse 1908 novel Hell. The play will have its world premiere at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, opening April 27 at the German Society of Pennsylvania, 611 Spring Garden Street, running through May 15.  Tickets are $15-$30.

“Hell, the novel, was actually handed to me years ago by an associate, just a friend who thought it fit my interests,” Savadove said. “It sat on my bookshelf for close to 8 years.”

Barbusse’s novel caused a great sensation when it was first published: reviewers debated (and still debate) whether it is a novel about voyeurism or solipsism. In the novel, a young man moves into a Parisian boardinghouse, and through a hole in the wall observes the lives of his fellow boarders: as he watches them give birth and die, fall in love, commit adultery, perpetrate and become victims of cruelty, he becomes obsessed with what is going on in the next room.

“A man who peeps through a hole in his room: very theatrical, very much about the process of watching theater even,” Savadove said. “I met with the guy who is playing the lead (Beschler), whom I’ve worked with before, and we had talked about doing an adaptation or a new piece, so we decided to work on Hell.”

EgoPo, which focuses on building a repertory of classic theater and adaptations, chooses themes in classic theater for each season, and they had already chosen  ‘theater of cruelty’ influences on and from Antonin Artaud, and were planning a season of shows adapted from Artaud’s work.

“I found that Barbusse was a big influence on him,” Savadove said. “And realized as I got into it, that it helped give birth to the French Avant Garde movement. We knew this would be a very intense theater piece.”

Just before he caught Hell, Savadove met with PIFA, which was in the planning stages of the festival, and developing ideas with Philadelphia theater companies, PIFA’s focus on Paris in the early part of the 20th century meshed with EgoPo’s season.

“I knew the season would fit PIFA potentially,” Savadove said. “So I found the book again, and said I hope I like this thing…I’d read about it, but not read it, and when I did, I realized, oh my God it’s great!”

EgoPo has been working on the piece for about 9 months. Savadove described the process as, in the early stage “going page by page…we know the whole novel. Ross and I would sit for 4 hours at a shot together, 3 or 4 times a week, and try to convert each page into a theater piece. And we would sort of have a very similar sense of what language tends to pop onstage, so it was a very easy process, done together, out loud. And then we would read chunks of the novel, and meticulously begin adapting it.”

As they worked, they tried to figure out how big a cast they’d need: how many actors, how many characters each they could play. About halfway through first draft, they’d figured out the size of their cast.

“Once we finished the rough draft, we brought cast in, starting to stage it, and doing table work,” Savadove said. At that point the cast became incredibly active. About 2-1/2 months ago, we had a 2 week development process with the cast, to really finish the script. Then we took a break before beginning rehearsals, but even then, every scene, the script is open to changes and tweaks, and cast is very participatory.”

During a show’s development, Savadove starts thinking about the light and sound needed, and brings in designers early: set design; music, even the possibility of video is part of the conversation through the whole process.

EgoPo tries to book its casts for the season: building and playing in repertory. Savadove says that on any given show, about half the company are regulars who have done multiple shows with them. The company works to create shows that can continue to live after their initial run; pieces that can tour, return to the rep, go into different venues. The process of creating Hell took about nine months, about six months longer, Savadove estimated, than the company usually spends on a new piece.

While they may have spent nine months in Hell, EgoPo has spent longer than that in limbo and purgatory. Founded 20 years ago in San Francisco, EgoPo later moved to NYC.

“We were there for awhile,” Savadove said, until they moved to New Orleans. “New Orleans was really sort of the perfect dream; a city that was very affordable, and NYC had gotten very frustrating…” he said in a voice many companies know all too well. “In New Orleans, we got a long-term lease on a space and built our theater…we just didn’t know the hurricane would hit.”

When Katrina devastated New Orleans, EgoPo was on tour—in Philadelphia, Savadove, a Philly native, had never performed a show in his home town, and “I was dying to take a show to Philly,” he said.

So the EgoPo troupe watched in horror on TV as their home was destroyed…and the news media watched them watching the destruction, an act of voyeurism (or solipsism) not unlike the protagonist of Hell.

“Our theater in New Orleans was completely destroyed,” Savadove said. “The roof blown off, most of us lost our homes, it just didn’t really make sense to stay there anymore.” So the company stayed in Philadelphia. “It was the time to come home basically.”

In EgoPo’s production, Savadove has placed the audience in a position similar to the voyeur: “I think part of the process is that they take the perspective of the peeper’s room, the audience is literally sitting in, they share his view of the world,” he said. “They are implicated in the process. And it’s really fun on that side.

In addition to Ross Beschler, the cast includes Mary Lee Bednarik, Allan Radway, Sean Lally, Sarah Howard, Ed Swidey, Cindy Spitko and Sarah Schol.   Set Design is by Tony Hostetter, Light and Original Score by Matt Sharp, Video by Ren Manley, and Costumes by Janus Stefanowicz.

Kathleen Warnock received financial compensation for this post from PIFA (Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts).

When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to John Wanamaker’s department store in downtown Philadelphia. It was a special treat to go down and see the great bronze eagle in the lobby, to eat at the Crystal Tearoom, and to stop by the founder’s office…left exactly as it was the day John Wanamaker died, behind a wall of glass, the day of his death outlined in red on the office calendar. To me, Wanamaker’s was one of the things that made Philadelphia a great city. A great city should have a fine department store, a world-class symphony orchestra, beautiful art museums, and a mediocre team in the National League.

To Rogelio Martinez, “Wanamaker” was the name of a famous mile. That is, The Wanamaker Mile, a race for star runners in the annual Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden. Martinez ran track, and he knew that the Irish did well in it, especially Eamonn Coghlin, “Chairman of the Boards.”

“I associated the Wanamaker name with Madison Square Garden,” Martinez said. “Only when I started to spend time in Philadelphia did I say to Terry (Arden Theatre artistic director Terrence J. Nolen): ‘tell me a little bit about the Eagle.’ That’s sort of how I arrived at it…via a long, circuitous route.”

Martinez, a NYC-based playwright, has had Philadelphia on his mind a lot lately as the author of “Wanamaker’s Pursuit,” a new play being presented at the Arcadia Stage by the Arden Theatre, directed by Terrence Nolen, as part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, currently in previews, and opening April 7, running until May 22.

The title character in Martinez’s play is Nathan Wanamaker (played by Jürgen Hooper), a fictional character inspired by John Wanamaker’s grandson, John Wanamaker, Jr. Wanamaker Sr.’s son Rodman, actually did spend a great deal of time in Paris in the late 19th century.

“When Rodman dies, the store gets passed to a trust,” Martinez recounted. “I was always interested in why it doesn’t go to the children. Oftentimes, third generations lose some interest in the family business.” Rodman Wanamaker took over the family business after his father’s death, but did not pass it on to his children (Wikipedia hints that Rodman’s only son, John, had “personal problems” which prevented his taking over the family business.) John, Jr. was known as “Captain John” after his service on General Pershing’s staff in World War I. Captain John died at the age of 45, in 1935.

Martinez originally intended to write “a little bit” about John, imagining what the young man might have seen, who he would have met in Belle Epoque Paris.

“I started writing a story about a young man going to Paris, learning to be a buyer,” the playwright said. “But what I was really writing about was Paris in 1911 (the heart of the time that gives PIFA its theme), with people like Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso.” This is when Stein and Picasso and other artists in their circle were becoming themselves, and before they became as visible to a wide range of people as they later did. “If you write about them at that time, we get to know who they are as they begin have an idea of who they are. This is the moment when their egos are beginning to blossom. By the time you get to the 1920s, their egos are in full bloom.”

Among the relationships that he follows is that of Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein, which was beginning to fall apart, and it would eventually completely collapse. “I wanted to explore that aspect of it, a brother and sister coming to the end of their relationship,” Martinez explained. “And breaking up, in a sense. It was a sad breakup.”

Martinez spent six or seven months doing the historical research on the piece, then another 3 months writing the play, and did rewrites over the course of another year. The play was commissioned as part of the Arden’s Independence Foundation New Play Showcase, and received additional support with an Edgerton Grant from the Theatre Communications Group, which allowed the production 2 additional weeks of rehearsal.

So Martinez had the opportunity to bring his Nathan Wanamaker to Paris to meet and mingle with great artists on the verge. One of the major characters in the play is Paul Poiret (played by Wilbur Edwin Henry), a French designer whose influence on fashion made him one of the most important figures of his time; now he is more of a supporting character, not as well known, in today’s histories.

“The idea is that this man was a name that’s now forgotten. It’s really interesting who history decides to remember and who it decides to forget. Leo Stein, as far as culturally, as far as being responsible for curating this art, is as powerful a force as Gertrude Stein,” Martinez said. “He wasn’t the artist that his sister was, but as far as having an eye for art, he was. But we’ve forgotten Leo. The Metropolitan Museum recently did a show on Paul Poiret’s fashions, so it’s not like we’ve forgotten him, but he’s not a name like Coco Chanel, who came in the 1920s, and knocked him off the map. Yet, in 1911, he was a rock star. He was it. He brought fashion into the modern era. So it’s interesting for me to see, and for audiences to see, who history chooses to remember and why.”

“Why have we chosen to remember the Mona Lisa, when so much art was created in that period?” Martinez asked. (The theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 is part of “Wanamaker’s Pursuit” and the subject of another PIFA play, “Art Lover” by Jules Tasca). “I don’t quite have an answer for that, and I don’t expect audiences to have an answer, but it’s interesting to contemplate the question, and at least each of the main characters has a different response to the paining that makes it personal to them. That’s what the Mona Lisa does…when we see it, we have a personal reaction to it, different from any other.”

 “Wanamaker’s Pursuit” also features Geneviève Perrier as Denise Poiret, Catharine K. Slusar as Gertrude Stein, David Bardeen as Leo Stein and Shawn Fagan in a variety of roles including Pablo Picasso.

It's playing at the Arcadia Stage at the Arden Theatre, 40 N. 2nd St. Tickets are $20-$39 (student and senior discounts may be available).