Most everything and anything makes Barbara Russell laugh.

"I am always looking for the humor in a situation," says the Pittsburgh entertainer, "but I don't laugh at jokes as much as I do at situations.

"Despair isn't something I often feel, but I experience it when I feel powerless to change a bad situation."

Russell, a mother and grandmother and a friend of many years who often surprises you with her sensitivity and touch of seriousness because we all seem to know her as funny, will receive the Pittsburgh New Works Festival 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday.

That doesn't mean the North Side resident is through achieving. Far from it.

I am so admiring of her continuing to perform at age 74 because what used to seem like a breeze when I was doing stage work years ago now stirs terror in my body.

Not Russell.

"I keep performing because the excitement of getting the laugh and hearing the applause is still as rewarding as it was when I tap-danced to "Little Old Lady Passing By" at age 6. And I have to wonder who chose that song for a 6-year-old?

"I love theater because age doesn't matter."

She's doing theater now with two fake knees and a fake hip and admits it limits what she can do on stage. But directors accommodate her needs, which tells you something about how much they think of her.

Although she's done several plays, Pittsburghers know her best as the late Don Brockett's comedy partner.

"Don and I were different performers ... Don would set fire to his hair to get a laugh. Doing a show with someone working that hard all I had to do was stay still and react. As a result, we made a perfect team."

On occasion, the two traveled to New York to do a showcase, when they would play on a club's dark night, usually a Monday.

"I would get excited seeing my name in lights in the Big Apple," she recalled. "But I figured out very early that they laugh and applaud the same way in Pittsburgh as they do in New York, and I could afford to raise my kids here and have enough left over to get a pizza."

Russell isn't the clown who in real life is sad, although she admits she can cry when she sees people saying goodbye at a bus station or a father hugs his son. I can attest to her soft side.

"My eyes are dripping quite often, but most often I can turn that around and get in a few laughs."

She's the eldest of six and her brothers and sisters are very bright and witty. Teasing and one-upmanship, she says, was a constant growing up.

"I was my full height of 5-foot, 10 1/2 inches in sixth grade. I knew I'd never play the ingenue so it was going to be character ladies, which were always more interesting anyway.

"Don and I started our career as a team at Jennerstown Mountain Playhouse in 1960. Some 38 years later I was asked to do Dolly Levi in 'The Matchmaker.' The directors there, particularly Guy Stroman, began to see me as an actor, not just a comedienne, so I've done many varied roles since then."

She was wonderful in "Steel Magnolias" at the playhouse this past summer.

Her dream role? "The next one."

"I will act as long as I am physically able and get offered parts. I do still get anxious before a performance but I have no fetishes. I do say a short prayer and bless myself."

A former elementary teacher, Russell volunteers with Gateway to the Arts, where she works teachers, showing them "drama techniques they can use in their classroom."

She also works with senior groups.

And how does this divine and diverse dynamo diva of drama say she would like to be remembered?

"She did no harm and she made us laugh."

Thank goodness there's more to come.