There will be plenty of glitz and high glamour along 52d Street tomorrow, when best-selling author Pearl Cleage and award-winning actor Al Freeman Jr. are honored with handprints on the Bushfire Walk of Fame.

Simpkins, Bushfire's founder, owner, and artistic director, believes in celebrating achievement. That's what he's done for 13 years with the Walk of Fame, which even awards posthumous honors. Actors William Marshall and Isabel Sanford are this year's recipients.

But for 32 years, Bushfire's overriding mission has been clear: to use theater not only to entertain, but also to develop craft, culture, and community.

"Theater's a part of every culture's life," Simpkins says. "Bushfire wants to expose African Americans to that experience. If you don't develop the art, you're losing something you don't know you're losing."

Regional theater survives

Which is what Simpkins, a West Philly kid himself, envisioned when he bought the former Locust Theater back in 1977.

As the years went on, Simpkins purchased three more buildings on the block from Locust to Chancellor Streets. The complex now includes a literary cafe, a writers' workshop, and a puppet theater.

It all serves as a training ground for aspiring young actors, directors, and playwrights to hone their skills.

Bushfire stands as an example of how regional theater, complete with a professional ensemble, can survive - especially in harsh economic times.

Nearly all of Simpkins' actors are college-trained; many have had other gigs on Broadway. But they've always kept up a long-term commitment to Bushfire.

Which may mean taking a cut in pay. "During good times, if the actors make Actors' Equity salaries, they'll get them," Simpkins says. "But if things aren't going well, they adjust, because they're part of the theater," Simpkins says.

In other words, the intrinsic value of art should override money.

And at Bushfire, it does. It has to. To lure the community in, Bushfire keeps ticket prices reasonable. Though some productions have sold out the 428-seat house, Simpkins claims success when the theater's half full.

Building community

Michael Brown, 42, a veteran ensemble member, first took an acting class at Bushfire when he was a 15-year-old student at the Philadelphia High School of Creative and Performing Arts.

He's been with Simpkins ever since.

Brown guesses that he's acted in every Bushfire production except the one running now, P.J. Gibson's Long Time Since Yesterday. And that's because its entire cast is female.

"I went into acting thinking I wanted to be rich and famous," Brown says. "But Al was saying things I hadn't heard anybody say before, about the business of theater, about the aesthetics of acting. Hollywood puts up a good front, but it says nothing about building community and culture."

Unlike North Philly's Freedom Theatre, once nationally respected but now a shell of its former self, Bushfire operates on a shoestring budget of public and private funds.

"We get grants, but we don't take capital grants," Simpkins says. "We wait and do it ourselves if we can do it."

Not surprisingly, Simpkins has become a master fund-raiser. Bushfire is his baby. It's the only thing he does. And while he's proud of his success, his biggest wish is to share the artistic wealth: "We're the only legitimate inner-city theater that has long-term legitimacy - but that's not a plus."

So while he builds, he searches. Now in his 60s, Simpkins doesn't plan to be at Bushfire's helm forever. Like the African storyteller who sits around the fire - from which Bushfire gets its name - Simpkins is looking for the community's next griot.

Keeping the tradition of inner-city theater alive. That is the only way Bushfire - and the art it creates - will survive.