Sharing the love. Sharon D Clarke

Sharon D Clarke’s many talents are not kept to herself. This woman redefines generosity. Her talent, her spirit, her love - all are gifts that are shared with no compromise. We are here to receive!

Who are you?

My name is Sharon D Clarke. I am an actor, performer, singer. I have been doing so since I was six. It’s my joy, it’s my passion, it’s my love. It has brought the most wonderful people into my life. I’m married to Susie Mckenna, so I’m a wife, a very happy wife  enjoying lockdown. It’s nice to have the time, do you know what I mean? When lockdown started, I was in the States, so this period of time we’d have been on separate continents, so to actually have this time together it’s an absolute joy. When we’re here, normally, we pass like ships in the night. It’s good to be able to sit down and to dance around the kitchen and plan our meals. We have eaten WELL, not the same thing every day, let me tell you! It’s joyous, it’s joyous.

Why do you do what you do?

Because I love it. Because I love to share it. I went to a local dance school, a friend of mine was going. I asked my Mum and Dad if I could go and they said yes. From the first class I was entranced. From the first show I did at Bow Civic Centre (I think I sang Paper Roses) - hooked, absolutely hooked. I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I loved the putting together of the show, the teamwork of doing that. I love sharing what I thought everybody else could do. My mum used to sing, so there was always music in the house. I thought everybody sang. When you find out that not everybody does that you go, “Oh, that’s quite a special thing…”. And you know people are always saying that they’d really love to be able to sing, so I consider it a real gift, an absolute gift that is my duty to share. It’s my absolute duty to share it, to share the love. When I hear other people, whatever talent it is, if it’s art, whether they draw, whether they sing, whether they dance, that exchange of that energy, that giving of that talent, that gift, is such a beautiful thing and can elevate people out of whatever situation they may be in. It can transport them, can get them to empathise, to see the world in a completely different way, can get them to affirm who they are, all of that. That’s to do with humanity and who we are as people and how we connect, how we are the same, how we differ, how that all comes together and sharing that. The more we share that, the more we see what we have in common, there is love. People sitting around and singing, not even as professional singers, just as people, in church, around campfires, at a party when a tune comes on and everybody starts to join in, it’s so uplifting, so joyous, it’s so glorious. That is something as human beings we can hang onto ourselves. It takes me to another place, it’s glorious, I love it.

If you couldn’t do this, what would you do?

I’d be a social worker. It’s what I’m trained in. I went to Ivy’s and Anna Scher’s. I’ve never had any formal training, I didn’t go to Central or Guildhall or any place like that, but I am a trained social worker. That was my parents saying – okay, we are completely one hundred, three thousand percent in with what you want to do but you have to have some kind of back-up plan. I’ve always been the girl going, “Listen, it’s just your period, you’re not dying, I don’t know why your parents didn’t talk to you about this” or “No, you really have to go home and talk to your mum about that, because that’s an issue you really need to deal with”. I’d be on the bus and some kids would be quarrelling and I’d be the one to break it up. All of this happened a long time before “Holby”, before people would be like…”Ain’t you? Didn’t you used to be…?”  That’s always been in my personality. Helping people in that way is the one thing that I thought - if I’m doing something for the rest of my days, what’s going to feed my soul? That would feed my soul. I haven’t had to do a day’s work, officially, as a social worker but it’s still quite a part of my life. I was in college, waiting for my exam results, and in the common room there was a copy of The Stage. I picked it up, went to the back of it, saw a job advertised, went for that job. Jude Kelly employed me, she gave me my Equity card and that was my biggest break. I’d known friends who had worked for forty weeks or years collecting their credits to get their provisional card and I didn’t have to do that. Mine was handed to me on my first job. So I count myself very blessed in that way. That put me on my journey - someone had that belief in me on my very first job. I left college on the Friday and started on the Monday at Battersea Arts Centre.

I’ve had two weeks when I wasn’t working and I did a courier job (the other thing I love is driving!). I got a little courier job and set off from Old Street . The first job they gave me was in Croydon. By the time I battled from Old Street across London to Croydon, I was like, you know what? I don’t think this is the job for me. It’s going to destroy my love of driving. I did it for two weeks and after that I was like - no and then a job came in and that’s been that. 

Do you think it’s unique, your position and where you are now?

I don’t know. I’ve been at it a long time, it hasn’t come overnight. It’s something I've worked at, for years. I think I’m here because I’ve worked for it and also because people have believed in me and that I’ve been given fantastic opportunities. I’ve worked with some glorious people, glorious, glorious people. That’s the main thing, I think. I’ve just taken the path that I’ve taken. I’m not really one of these people that goes, “right, by the time I’m thirty I’d have done this and then looking to go onto that”. I move through life, where the wind blows me and how it shapes me. As my mum would say, “what is for you, is for you.” That has been part of my mantra. I’m quite able to let things go. I’m not one of those, “that job should have been mine”. That happened to me once. The one job I was desperate to get, was “Dreamgirls”. And “Dreamgirls” was coming to London. Everybody was going, “you’ll be a shoe-in, you’ll get that, no problem”. I auditioned and of course then, you can hear where my voice is, I’m a low person, I sing low, I chat low. What was written on that score was far too high for my ass and in the end, Rachel Mcfarlane got it. And Rachel - joy, boom, wonderful, beautiful singer. I totally understood it. I was happy for Rachel, gutted for myself, absolutely gutted. And then the show didn’t happen. I thought you’re gutted not to have it - how much more gutted would you have been, to have got the show and then never happen? That taught me a strong lesson. My mum said, “What is for you, is for you”. And I took that on board.

I just do what I do and love the stuff that I do and it’s eclectic. I did make one decision when I first started out in telly, which was to stop going for tv auditions because I was only playing nurses. Everything I played, everything I was going for was just a nurse. And it wasn’t a speaking nurse, she may have a line or maybe three, my goodness (!) but she was never really a part. I just thought - I didn’t come into this business to do that. And I’m not doing any disservice to nursing or nurses. They are our shining glory! But I thought, every time I appear on telly, I can’t be a nurse. I can’t be the same thing every time, so I withdrew myself from telly for a while, then got more of a name in theatre. Having done that, I could go back to telly and go for parts that I wanted to see me playing – no - parts that I would have wanted to see on telly when I was a child. The people I wasn't seeing. You know what I mean? It’s been glorious. I’m getting some beautiful telly parts, some gorgeous theatre parts, I’m doing lots of kids’ stuff. I love my kids’ TV series! It just gives me so much joy! I love it.

The pandemic hit, just as you were about to start “Caroline or change” in the States.  What was that like?

Susie had come over on the Wednesday, we were doing our first dress on the Thursday, due to open on the Friday (preview). That Thursday, we got the news that Broadway was closing down. That was the day before we were about to start. Of course I was gutted but I was gutted for everybody. You couldn’t take it personally. “Look what they did to OUR show?!” Do you know what I mean? This has happened to everybody and what I really loved was the fact that Broadway decided to close down as one. That decision was made for everyone, whereas here, we’ve had the whole headless chicken thing, with people running around, don’t know what’s going on. Him who has money trying, him who doesn’t gone under… It’s been madness. I love the fact that Broadway said, let’s do this collectively, so that everybody could take it on board as one, instead of everybody struggling. Initially, it was trying to keep the company’s morale up, saying we will get through this. We know we have a show to come back to, so let’s take this time to rest and garner ourselves, knowing that we are going to come back. Initially, they’d said they thought it might be three or four weeks at the most. I was thinking – well, I can hang in the States for three or four weeks, that would be cool. Susie was due to go back home on the Tuesday. On the Sunday, the President brought in the travel ban. That didn’t look like a good sign. Susie’s flight disappeared into the ether. Just cancelled, That was a big, red flag. We got the company manager to book us two tickets out of there immediately and we left on the Monday. We think we got one of the last American Airline flights out of the States. We came back and locked ourselves down because, when the show had gotten the news, the company had gone to midtown Manhattan, in a tiny little no space, low ceiling bar, drinking. We didn’t know it was corona, we just...went out. Because we knew we’d been in New York, when we came home, we self-isolated ourselves. Then Britain locked down, so we’ve been locked down, it feels, since time immemorial.

Being home, it made me angry. It just made me angry. There was no cohesion, people are just floundering and not getting any help. It just made me angry. Being told that we should retrain made me so angry. It’s like, hang on, we bring in more money than sport, we’re educational, we deal with the community, the theatre stuff that happens in communities, not just in London, but in places where that theatre might be the only theatre. What that does, when a community loses that - none of that had been thought through. It’s not just about theatre, it’s about community programmes, just so much. Just being left by the wayside and being told that you’re worth nothing and what you do doesn’t mean anything…

What do you in a situation like this?

You go online babe! You go online. We’ve all had to adapt. I’ve said to Susie, who knew we’d be zooming like mad? That it would become a thing? That’s how we’ve been able to stay creative, stay in communication. Ten years ago, if this had happened, we’d all have been sunk. When we first had wifi and it was all bing-bong-bing-bong-binnnng, we wouldn’t be able to do stuff like this. So, the fact we have technology to help us in this time, it’s something we must use. It’s still sharing. People might be on a screen but it’s still sharing. If I’m doing something for a charity thing where they’ve asked you to sing Happy Birthday to someone, or to sing the Twelve Days Of Christmas, or to read something, it’s still sharing. It’s still giving. The audience might not be there but I know they’re there. I don’t feel like it’s just a blank screen. Even when I do telly, you play to the camera, you play to the crew, you play to the people. It’s just as valuable to me and in fact, at this time, when people don’t have access to lots of the things they used to have, even more valuable. We can still bring something to people, in some form, in some way. I had a friend say to me that she didn’t feel that she was being as productive as she could be. I said, “you’re doing the best that you can with what you have and I know that you’re working, composing and writing scores for other theatres in Europe. You’re still working. Because you’re not leaving the house every day or going to a certain place, you feel like you’re not being productive. We’ve just done a concert, I know you’re being productive!”

I think that people can be a bit too hard on themselves. Because there’s been no help and direction, people think that it’s never going to happen. But we have to find a way and we will find a way. We have to believe, we have to have hope. I know lots of people that have left the industry, driving cars, working at Heathrow, working at the supermarkets because they have families and have to do what they have to do. You have to do what you have to do. It’s as simple as that. There will be other ways and those people will be asked from time to time if they can do a charity thing for somebody because they are wonderful performers and people know them already. I’ve been lucky, my work has become voiceover work at the moment, to the point where I’ve got myself a mike, I’ve got a little booth. I’m doing narrations and voiceovers and I thank God every time something like that happens. When I’m not, there’s a spare room that needs to be sorted out, songs that are going around in my head that I need to get down, there’s other things - I’ve not had the time to do that before. Now I have the time. If it’s not to do with actually leaving the house and going into a building to work, there’s stuff that I wanted to do or people that I wanted to hook up with, now is the time. Now is the time to chat, we all have a piece of time. “How do you feel about that project? Let’s put our thinking hats on and see where we can come up with something for January.”  It’s just finding ways of being creative in that way. I’ve joined Fender and am teaching myself guitar. We have Duolingo, so we’re learning Spanish. It's just finding other ways of using the time so you’re not just sitting there like that, waiting and saying when, when, when, when. Diverting yourself and hopefully coming through with different things that you have added to your bow. That being said, I can relax well, though! I can chill in a nanosecond. I’m not someone who runs around frantically doing stuff. I do stuff at my own pace and when I want to chill or just sit down and catch a few episodes of Small Axe or Heroes, that’s what I do.

You just have to get on, you have to. Even in this business. Now don’t get me wrong, I love this business but sometimes some foolishness has happened to me because of my beautiful dark skin...but you have to get on. You don’t jack in the towel and start cussing everybody, Some fights you take, some you leave for another day because when I get you, it’ll be so sweet. Sometimes you know, if you don’t walk away, you’ll end up in prison. You choose your battles but you have to keep keeping on. You have to get used to, sometimes, being the only one representing. That’s happened to me quite a lot, that I can be the ‘one’ face. 

How has the George Floyd murder informed the work that you do and want to do?

I think, for me, it wasn’t so much about the work but what it was making me feel. I found myself in this weird place, which we all experienced, of complete and utter despair, complete anger and hope, so hopeful that we maybe might have reached some kind of catalyst that would turn something around. When the BBC started to want to have conversations about things like hair and makeup and how people feel about that, when the conversations started to happen seemingly in the way that they should have done so freaking long ago, I was hopeful. But I was despairing that people seemed to be unaware of what was going on. God bless George Floyd and his sacrifice and his out and out murder. But he is yet another black man in a long list of black men, women and children who have been murdered since the days of colonialism. For people to be going, “Now I have to do something…”  How many people have to die before people say this is a bad thing and it needs to be sorted out? How many people have to die? Maybe, because we are in this pandemic and people do have more time on their hands, more of the world has seen this and now they can get on board and that can only be a good thing. But my God, how long?

I am still hopeful but when I start talking about it and get back to how angry I am - when it’s bubbling and it’s here, it feels like a past thing. I am still hopeful, because at least we are having some kind of dialogue with people asking what can they do. Initially, the ‘how do you feel?’ and ‘where do we go from here?’ was getting on my flipping nerves. I don’t want to sound ungrateful but I felt like - don’t ask me that shit. You don’t know? You don’t understand how I’d be feeling? Do I have to articulate it to you at a moment when actually, I’m so pulling in so many directions, emotionally, that I don’t think I can emotionally articulate it. I don’t feel I can. So, feel my tone, feel my presence and get on with it because we’ve been asking for so long. I’m quite prepared and happy and joyous to walk beside you but I can’t find all the solutions for you because they’re not problems that I created. My natural instinct will always be to help where I can, to uplift where I can, to assist where I can. That doesn’t mean that I ain’t human and sometimes I need to say - Do it yourself. Don’t ask me to find that for you as well. 

The biggest bonus of this all has been time with my wife, and - on the flipside of that -  less time with the family. We are facetiming and calling and all of that but not able to squeeze them. But the joy has been having quality time with Susie. I mean we’ve been together twenty years and this is the first time apart from going on holiday for a couple of weeks, where we’ve had time to just enjoy each other’s company, truly enjoy it. “Wake up baby. What are we going to have for dinner tonight? Okay what time’s your meeting? See you for lunch? Last weekend we did ‘holiday at home’. We have a sofa bed downstairs, we pulled it out, made it up, had little cocktails and put on the programmes we wanted to watch and we did ‘holiday at home’. Because the sofa bed is there, you get a different perspective of the room and it was really nice. It was wonderful to have the time to do that with each other. That has been a big, big blessing, having the time with my wife. Hopefully, if things go well, “Caroline” will be this year, so I will be off to the States and we’ll be on different continents. It’s about soaking up as much as we can. When we get back, work is work. Susie is up to her eyes with the Kiln (Theatre), so she’s always in some kind of meeting. If I'm not in a theatre, I’ll be in my little booth, recording. We’ll do as much together as possible, have lunch, dinners, have little constitutional walk around the block, exercise together. We’ll try and hang onto this, it’s been glorious. 

Has the pandemic changed you in any way?

Only in the beginning. When I got back in March, I didn’t get any kind of work until July. March was alright because we were at the beginning of the pandemic and didn’t know what was going on. April was a  bit like - hang on, there’s no money coming in. Lucky enough, Susie was still working at Kiln. May was like - no, no, no, no, no, no. I was starting to get really worried because I understood that nothing was going on but NOTHING was going on and I wasn’t earning a cent. That wasn’t good. I had a little bit of money worries but also ,okay, Susie was earning. It wasn’t like there was nothing coming into the house. I had to trust that something would come, knowing that it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t like I was auditioning and not getting jobs because no one wanted to work with me. This was a situation where no one was working. I just calmed my ass, it wasn’t personal and trust. And then the work started to come. My agents have just been absolutely glorious, both my acting agents and my voiceover agents. I’m able to put ickle food on the table and pull my weight and it’s good to be earning again and doing the stuff that I love doing. It’s still so varied and I love that. It’s really eclectic, coming from documentaries about stately homes to children’s mindfulness series to a kids’ series about zoos, adverts, it’s wonderful, wonderful. I’m still able to feel creative and eclectic and diverse in the work that I’m doing and I’m still me. 

Stateside, they will say to you -  what do you do? I’m an actor. What else do you do? I sing. What else do you do? Over here, it’s - What do you do? I’m an actor. I also…. We were at the Kiln actually, doing “Blues In The Night” and a woman came up to me afterwards and she said she really enjoyed the show. She thought it was fantastic, great cast blah blah blah. She then asked me if I was an actor or a singer? I replied, saying she’d just watched the show and asked her what she thought. She answered that she thought I was both. So why was she asking me whether I was one or the other? For me, all the media is the same. There are different processes and ways of achieving them but ultimately, whatever we’re doing, if we break it all down, we’re all storytellers. However we decide to tell that story, whether that’s through song, dance or music, whether you produce it or direct it, create it, whatever we are doing, we are telling stories. That’s it for me, fundamental, bottom line. So let’s keep telling the stories, whichever way we need to tell them. If I need to put it onto a voice tape to tell that story, fine. If I need to collaborate with this person, if I need to sing it, if I need to act it, if I need to dance it, if I need to tap it out with my foot, the whole thing is the same thing. As long as I’m continuing to tell the stories, in whatever format that may be, however that discipline needs to be applied, then that’s how I do it. There is no difference for me. Trust and put it out there. Who needs to find it, will find it. 

How has the journey of your art engaged your voice – emotionally, artistically or politically?

I don’t know if it has. I don’t think it has. I am as I have been, going on the way I’ve been going on. Nothing has changed in that way. Some things may blossom more, some things may bubble down a little less but that’s the equilibrium of life. I’m not sure how to answer that question. I think the answer is - it ain’t - it just is. Someone said to me once and I’m very proud of this - when you sing, you heal. I took that on board. I think that’s where that comes from, how I feel about it, about the sharing of it, the giving of it and sustaining it. If someone felt that, through something that I did, then I have to keep on doing that. If someone felt that way and felt strongly enough to tell me that…  I’d never thought of it that way. I was just singing because I Iove to sing. That’s a big thing to say to someone. If that’s how you feel, then I have to. I have to heal.

Who are you?

What do you mean?! What do you mean, who am I? I’m one of God’s children, baby. We’re all here. We’re all here and we just find our place, we trust, we find our place, we find our people, we find our community and then we do what we have to do. And along the way, other people might come and guide our mission but it’s a journey of love, it’s a journey of growth, it’s a journey of challenges that once you come over them, ride through them, go around them, find people to help you go through them, the journey is beautiful. This gift of life that we have is wonderful. We must just live it to the best of our ability. That’s our one duty I think, to live our lives the best that we can, in the best way possible. To uplift and inspire those around us and pass the baton on.