Adrift in more ways than one, a New Orleans-based theater company called EgoPo is hoping for a permanent relocation to Philadelphia. Lane Savadove and his theater troupe left New Orleans on the night of Aug. 27 for a brief visit to Philly's Fringe Festival, scheduled to return home to the Crescent City afterward. Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, just as the group was about to start its Philadelphia run.

"It took over a month until I could get back to see our city," says Savadove, "and it is in worse shape than television has shown. Rubble and garbage are piled everywhere, overturned cars fill the street medians and you have to stand in line for hours to buy water or to pick up your mail. It'll be a long time till anyone there thinks about going to theater."

The home he had rented was soaked with 8 feet of water. The roof was blown off his theater; costumes, scenery and props were ruined. He says that future prospects in New Orleans are grim. And the idea of relocating somewhere close is unacceptable.

"New Orleans has been a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous city," says Savadove. "Macho Cajun guys got off oil rigs and came to the theater. We are so far south of the South that we're practically European. Nearby cities just don't have the same type of audiences." When he moved to New Orleans to become a theater professor at Loyola, he "fell in love with it and its multiculturalism." But Savadove fears that recent settlers in New Orleans, like Asians, ex-New Yorkers and collegians, might not return to the city and what's left will be the very poor and the conservative French aristocracy. And who is going to contribute to a theater company while a city needs rebuilding?

Currently, the eight members of EgoPo are without work and income. They are homeless, and they've scattered to the residences of relatives from Louisiana to California to the Midwest. Savadove, 38, says he's learning the intricacies of the food stamp and welfare programs. All of the troupe are depressed.

The company's artistic associate, Anne-Liese Juge Fox, is living in a FEMA trailer in Louisiana with her husband and two young children. Her husband's family's printing shop in New Orleans has been destroyed. "I grew up here," she says. "But when I go to familiar neighborhoods it's like, "where have I landed?' I feel I'm in a zombie film."

In September and early October, Savadove stayed at Philly's Doubletree Hotel, where rooms were provided free to hurricane victims. In late October he rented a U-Haul and drove his belongings from New Orleans to a new apartment in downtown Philly. Savadove grew up in Pennsylvania and graduated from Haverford College in 1989 but has been away from the Philadelphia area for many years, working in New York, San Francisco, Europe and New Orleans.

Still, Philadelphia didn't leave Savadove and his troupe to fend for themselves. As with the response to Katrina victims all over the country, the local theater community pitched in to help EgoPo. Terrence Nolen, artistic director of the Arden Theatre, dedicated a performance to the troupe and donated the proceeds. During the Fringe, performers sold Mardi Gras beads and handed over the cash to Savadove, all very quickly and anonymously. "The Philadelphia community was so supportive that I fell in love with the city," Savadove says.

He used to fantasize about doing theater in Bucks County, "where the ghost of Oscar Hammerstein sits on his porch and looks out at the cornfields." Now, his circumstances and the support he's received from the theater community have him planning seriously to move his operations here. If not Bucks County, then into Philadelphia itself.

"We can't dawdle for a year. The company thrives on doing work. We were about to do a production of Eugene O'Neill's mask play, The Great God Brown. "

An avant-garde group, EgoPo's slogan is "emotions are born of the body." The company name combines the ego, or self, with the French word for skin, peau, respelled. EgoPo uses a permanent ensemble where actors share duties such as scenery and costume making.

So now Savadove is looking for a space where his company can train, rehearse and perform. James Haskins, head of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, has provided introductions and suggested sites. "They would bring something new to Philadelphia," says Haskins. "They are movement-based but, in contrast to Pig Iron and others, they use classic texts," referring to EgoPo's love of Genet, Beckett and Cocteau.

The Philadelphia Theatre Initiative has a contingency fund that may provide seed money to help EgoPo. "But first," says Savadove, "we have to find a space."

For more information about EgoPo Productions, visit www.egopo.org.