Russell has performed as a juggler and unicyclist for The Road Company's Flying Lemon Cirque throughout the southeastern states and for The Instant City Circus at Pittsburgh's City Theatre Company (where he performed with Bob Nickerson). In 2001 People's Light & Theatre Company produced his The Thoughts & Travels of Nicki, a new vaudeville piece for all ages, in which he performed with the juggler Joshua Mitsuo Weiner.

In August 2002, he worked as the consulting writer/juggler for the juggler Jon Held (formerly of Airjazz) on Jon's one-person show Tales of Lunacy at the 3 Legged Race Conference at the Southern Theatre in Minneapolis. Subsequent to this, he rewrote the text of Tales of Lunacy, which was then produced at Touchstone Theatre in the fall of 2003. He was the consulting writer for the juggler Michael Moschen in Michael Moschen in Motion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 1988 Next Wave Festival and at the Lincoln Center's SERIOUS FUN! Festival 1990. He directed Tony Duncan, who won the Individual Championships Competitions held at the 1994 International Jugglers' Association Convention. He has been a juggling/unicycling instructor for the S.T.E.P. summer program for New Haven inner city youth at the Yale University gym and for the Big Apple Circus' Circus Arts in Education program. He has also led juggling/unicycling workshops at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute Science Museum, and at various schools, universities and theatres.

His plays include The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker, Appointment with a High Wire Lady, The Day of the Picnic and Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name. They have been produced at various theatres throughout the country, including People's Light & Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Center Stage, and Yale Repertory. His plays have been published by Broadway Play Publishing, Dramatists Play Service, Baker's Plays and by Toneeluitgeverij Vink B.V. in the Netherlands. Selections from plays have been published in Smith & Kraus' Great Scenes for Young Actors (Volume II), in The Best Women's Stage Monologues, and The Best Men's Stage Monologues for 1991, 1992, and 2003, and in Penguin Books' 100 Monologues - An Audition Sourcebook from New Dramatists. His plays have also been presented at the Mark Taper Forum's New Work Festival ('95 & '97), the Sundance Institute Playwrights Lab ('90 & '92), O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference ('82, '83 & '86), and the New Harmony Project (2000) where he was also a writer-in-residence in 2001. The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker won a Drama-logue Critics Award in California for best play in 1987. His new play, The Second Death of Priscilla, was presented at Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2003 Humana Festival for New American Plays.

He has received a 2004 Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was resident playwright at People's Light & Theatre for the Theatre Residency Program of the National Endowment for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group ('99-'01). He has received previous playwright fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts ('83-'84 & '89-'90), and grants from the McKnight Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, the Pilgrim Project, and New York State Council on the Arts. He is a past member of New Dramatists in New York.

He was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Opera Theater to develop an opera libretto from his play The Wild Goose Circus. He was commissioned by Center Stage to adapt The Griffin & the Minor Canon, and by the Repertory Theater of St. Louis to write The Travelling Jekyll & Hyde Show, both for travelling children's theatre productions. The Travelling Jekyll & Hyde Show was further developed at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth. His new family audience play Theatre For Your Mother: The Little Red Riding Hood Show was produced in 2003 at People's Light & Theatre. It will be produced in 2004 by the Honolulu Theatre for Youth.

He has been a visiting writer or artist-in-residence at Lehigh University, Virginia Tech. University, University of Utah, University of Puget Sound, Long Island University's C.W. Post campus, Juniata College, Clark University, Cornell University, East Tennessee State University, Principia College and with New York Stage & Film at Vassar College. He has been a teaching artist in schools for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Opera Theater and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

email: russell_davis@juno.com

email option: playwright@juggler.net