IF YOU GO

WHAT: "Walking Lightly...A Portrait of Einstein"

WHEN: Saturday, June 21, 8 p.m.

WHERE: Boulder High School Auditorium, 1604 Arapahoe Ave.

HOW MUCH: $20; $15 for seniors/students

INFO: 303-474-1286 or www.mothersactingup.org

"B e fair. Be playful. And do things beautifully. If you meet someone whose life is grounded in fairness, beauty and playfulness, I can absolutely guarantee you two things. One, they lead a fertile life; and they are dearly loved. Fairness, beauty and playfulness is the E=MC squared of the 21st century."

This is playwright and educator Len Barron's advice for everyone, as he prepares to mark his 75th birthday with a benefit performance of his acclaimed one-man show, "Walking Lightly...A Portrait of Einstein," at Boulder High School on June 21.

Barron, who has performed the play at least 200 times at venues across the country, shares a number of characteristics with the Nobel prize-winning physicist.

Both struggled as students. Einstein dropped out of school at 15 and failed his initial college entrance exam; Barron's high school principal told him he "wasn't college material." Barron, with his gentle expression and white hair, bears a striking resemblance to Einstein. Einstein loved to walk, and his long strolls were the catalyst for many of his ideas. Barron, a Boulder resident since the early sixties, enjoys daily walks along Boulder Creek.

"My most constant companion is Boulder Creek," he says. "I like to look upstream, because the water, it keeps coming. For me, that's a metaphor of life. It keeps coming."

To truly know a river you must know its source, its place of origin. To understand Barron, to appreciate the forces that shaped him and drew him here as surely as gravity pulls water toward its natural level, you need to step back in time to his early childhood.

He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a tight-knit community of Jewish immigrants. His maternal and paternal grandparents came from Russia, and his parents, Lew and Anne, were the first generation born in America.

"It was a poor city but very rich in eccentricity and character," Barron says. "It was there that I learned the fundamental things about how to live a life."

There was his uncle Abraham, known simply as Uncle, who worked as an iceman. Despite his small stature, he could hoist the heavy blocks with ease; he said balance was the trick. "It turned out that everything in Uncle's life had a sense of balance."

He advised Len to always treat people well.

"He said, 'Lenny, there's much in life where you'll have little or no control. But about how you are with people, you are the boss, so be nice.' And that has been a cardinal influence for me."

There was his father, a cigar salesman for most of his life.

"From my father, I got my sense of rhythm. In a world which is very fast and very noisy, we get wrapped up in rhythms that are not our own. When you're in your own rhythm, both your body and your mind are clear to function in healthy ways."

There was Mrs. McNeely, his neighbor. World War II was raging, groceries were rationed, and Len's mother would send the 10-year-old over to help the elderly widow tend her victory garden.

He asked her if she ever thought about the future at his age. It turned out she had once asked her Aunt Sally the same question.

"She said, 'My Aunt Sally told me, as long as I was going to live the rest of my life in the future, beginning now, it's always a good idea to be on the lookout for beautiful things'."

For Barron, his search for beauty would eventually lead him to Colorado. He graduated high school and worked for another uncle, hauling scrap iron, but the work was unfulfilling. He had a series of part-time jobs, but eventually decided it was time to do something "dramatically different."

At 28, he left Chelsea and moved to Denver, but satisfying work continued to elude him. He drove a taxi, he sold magazines, and then, at the age of 30, decided to try college. It was there, during a philosophy lecture from David Hawkins, that the final guiding principle for his life presented itself.

"Right at the very end of that talk, [Hawkins] said, the proper study of mankind is children. I loved that idea but I didn't quite know what it meant," Barron says.

In the following years, Barron earned a sociology degree from CU in 1967 and a master's in education from Antioch-Putney in 1969, a private graduate school located in Keene, N.H., with various campuses across the nation. He founded the Clearing House, a student-run volunteer organization, he taught classes, he supported Parenting Place and Mothers Acting Up, and he continued his search for beauty and meaning.

Clarity eventually arrived in the form of 2-year-old Thea Bent. The two took a walk around the block that took well over an hour, as little Thea stopped to examine everything that caught her interest.

It is that natural curiosity, that sense of joy and wonder inherent in every 2-year-old, that is the driving force behind Einstein's work, and the driving force behind Len Barron.

His performance on Saturday benefits Mothers Acting Up, a local group that advocates for the interests of children worldwide, and tickets are available at Jacque Michelle, 2670 Broadway; Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St.; and the Hermitage Antiquarian Bookshop in Denver, 290 Fillmore Street.