Russ Sharek shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Russ, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: Have you ever been glad you didn’t act fast?
Everything I do is improved by not rushing through experiences.
Whenever I’m asked for advice, the dubious wisdom I dispense boils down to some variation of the phrase, “Slow the fuck down.”
While this may come across as a bit jarring and harsh, realize what it’s up against. Society has been engineered to encourage us to blow through every single lived experience at maximum speed. That is an impossible and unsustainable demand, and living that way is traumatic.
I’ve seen the result of people trying to live up to that. It’s something akin to a disassociative state.
It’s a numbness, and it’s unhealthy. It could conceivably render a person marginally more efficient, but the cost is simply too high: Not being fully present in your own life.
So I tell them, just firmly enough that they might hear it through the din.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I didn’t start off by calling myself a clown.
Early in my performing life, a person with significantly more formal training and foolish wisdom called me that. I thought to myself that “clown” seemed like a fairly accurate warning label for the aggregation of misfit weirdness that is me, and so I ran with it.
By academic definition, I’m considered a folk artist…which is a pleasant way of saying I’m an idiot who has learned everything I could in the hardest way possible. By being willing to go and pester the living legends, I’ve been able to learn from some of the best clowns and physical performers in the world.
I’ve been personally yelled at by Aitor Basuri from SpyMonkey, slept in a barn so I could follow Avner the Eccentric around, been told by the New York Goofs that my dancing needed work, and told to “cut the crap” by the amazing Angela DeCastro of the Why Not Institute.
More importantly, I listened…and eventually learned how to do the work of the theater clown.
I spent a few years figuring out how to share the wisdom I’d collected at a cultural center in Dallas. Their artistic director gave me an incredible gift, a black box theater in which I could play! We explored there in an experimental lab of my own devising for nearly five years, and I gained a reputation for being a somewhat eccentric-yet-effective educator.
Midway into that adventure, I caught on to the possibility that there might be gentler ways to share knowledge than with a metaphoric stick. I redirected a great deal of my energy into learning the skills of a proper teacher, and my table manners are better for it.
This naturally opened doors, and I was invited to create a clown theater program at a circus center. I remained there as the clown in residence, adventures as a touring performer not withstanding, until the pandemic ended the program.
There was then a blurry montage wherein I ran several online programs, and approximately a year and a half ago my performing company and I hatched a plan to travel across the country to renovate a 100-and-something year old building into our very own clown school, artists residency program, and theatrical play space.
Renovations to the building are currently underway.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
As a toddler, I knew my letters early. There’s a fair argument to be made that my ‘genius’ peaked before I was out of diapers.
My father was a different sort of genius, a gambler, a point of view which reshapes the entire world into games of chance.
He boasted often about his ‘brilliant’ child to his friends.
One of those poker buddies was around just often enough to know my Achilles heel, er tongue: While I knew my letters well, I could not yet pronounce all of them.
Armed with this knowledge of the fatal flaw in my youthful elocution, he bet my father that I could not say letters picked from my alphabet blocks.
The bet was quickly accepted, with my father assuming his ‘gifted child’ would soon be paying the bills.
And so, I was handed a first block… “B”
Then another… “S”
Then the scheme was put into action.
My father’s friend handed over the dreaded backflip of verbal gymnastics which is the twenty-third letter of the English alphabet.
I took the letter, and stared at it for a long moment.
Then I turned it upside down and said, “M”.
My father won a bet, and I learned that games can be played in many ways.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Like any theater maker, I’m prone to a fair share of off-stage dramatics. In my early days, I was prone to getting frustrated and storming off. Usually, this came with some impressive swearing, and declaring loudly that I quit.
One of our roustabouts, who later went on to become a terrific performer in his own right, pulled me aside. He told me, in his own dramatic way, that he was willing to follow me on his knees through broken glass. He would joyfully accept my orders, do the dirty work, and march into Hell if I asked.
On one condition.
He needed to know I’d be waiting for him on the other side of the challenges.
Dramatics aside, I learned something really important about leadership that day.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
Focusing on intellect rather than empathy.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
Our current project, the renovation of a quirky old hotel into a clown school, artists residency, and theatrical play space is an immense undertaking.
Practically speaking, it’s a big messy structure that needs a lot of paint, elbow grease, and care.
Early on, I remember a neighbor walking by one day while I was having a coffee break on the porch. They asked me if the place was “nice inside”.
I answered them, perhaps a little too honestly.
“Not really!”
They laughed, I laughed, and most importantly I finished my coffee and went back to whatever project I was doing to make the place a little better. It’s going to take years of effort to make this place “nice” in any conventional sense, and doing all those random little jobs is how that is going to happen.
Simultaneously, in other ways the place is already alive and thriving.
While we are not officially open for business, We’ve already got plans to host a few artist residencies for folks willing to forgo some creature comforts.
We’ve also been quietly plotting with some friends to create a mask workshop specifically for non-performers. The idea of offering some truly bizarre tools to people without performance pressure sounds both rewarding and fun.
So, from the first perspective, we’re buried by cardboard boxes and overwhelmed by a never ending to-do list involving wiping mud on and off of things.
If you look at the ideological angle of the space, about what the place is actually for, we’re already getting somewhere. We’re not just heading hopefully in the direction of our mission, we’re already hard at work creating an environment of unapologetic creative absurdity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://circusfreaks.org
- Other: https://mastodon.art/@russsharek
Image Credits
Photos by Ed Steele, Michael Leza, John Allen Grant, and Cityline Dallas.
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
