WALKIN' TALKIN' BILL HAWKINS

Had we have cruised Columbus Avenue in North Beach during the 1950s, would we have paused to appreciate the cutting edge of Jack, Allen, Burroughs or Monk? Had we have eaten at the Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s, would we have chortled as we ease dropped on the brisk repartee emanating from the Round Table, or would we have asked the maitre d' for a quieter table: far from the liquid lunch crowd.

Fresh art arrives as a foreigner; as such it triggers our xenophobia. While nearly everyone appreciates the humor of Saturday Night Live, how many of us would have recognized, in its disaggregated form, the talent and comic genius of Candy, Farley or Belushi in a remote comedy club say in Manteca on a Monday night?

The Marsh Theater introduces daring fresh art for audiences who have resisted the homogenizing influence of the mass media. The Marsh is a venue for those who seek their entertainment beyond the barrels of canned laughter dispersed by prime time.

Now through January 28th, the Marsh of Berkeley is presenting WALKIN' TALKIN' BILL HAWKINS: IN SEARCH OF MY FATHER. W. Allen Taylor writes and performs his autobiographical and biographical performance piece based on the relationship he never had with the father he never knew. The play is not only the researched, assembled fragments of his father, an African-American disc jockey: it is a historical excursus of black radio beginning in the late 1940s. It is a fatherless man's attempt to fill a void. Allen Taylor creates a montage of period music, historical data and dance. He resurrects characters from his and his father's past to form a mosaic image, for himself and the audience, of the man he never knew. Perhaps Mr. Taylor's most successful accomplishment in his performance is conveying to the audience the magnitude of the gnawing agony and the hollowness of life without a father.

For tickets, call the Marsh Berkeley hotline at (800) 838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org

Jeffrey R. Smith is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.