Hopping ‘Two Trains’ to Broadway

Sullivan Walker’s part in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” (at the Doolittle Theatre) is not what one would call taxing on the memory.

“The words are the least important thing,” says the actor, whose role as the beleaguered Hambone consists of several variations on a single line. “I’m concerned with his feeling, what motivates him,” says Walker, who originated the role in 1990 at Yale Rep and will travel with the play to Broadway in April. “To me, Hambone is a man who wants his just due. He’s obsessed with it, with not being denied. He wants to belong, to be connected.”

The performance is not without preparation. Arriving at the theater each evening, the actor makes a pointed effort to isolate himself from his cast mates. Between his sporadic appearances on stage, he goes back to his dressing room and turns off the lights. “I try to stay focused,” says the actor, who has a 14-year-old daughter, Keela, in New York. “I try to imagine where Hambone would be, the street he’d be on--his world.”

Walker, who was born in Trinidad, recalls his earlier screen heroes were Sidney Poitier and Charlton Heston: “I was so awed by them. I wanted to come to America and act.”

In 1969, his three-minute comedy sketch on a Caribbean TV show won top prize--an airline ticket to New York. Initially “a fish out of water,” Walker pursued a degree in education, made his living as a schoolteacher, and slowly built a career as an actor and writer (his work includes plays and short stories, mostly on Caribbean culture).

“There have been difficult times, but I stayed the course. The focus was always the work.” Now, with a recurring role as Cliff Huxtable’s doctor buddy, James Harmon, on “The Cosby Show” to his credit, Walker also hopes his longstanding Caribbean typecasting may be a thing of the past. “Who I am is who I am--I can’t lose that. But I can do lots of different accents.”