North Texan leads Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus into new era

ARLINGTON – The newly reimagined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey production is back in North Texas — bringing the same excitement with a slew of new acts.

At the center of all the action is a hometown kid who's ushering in a new generation of entertainment.

"It still sounds like a joke whenever I tell people, 'Yeah, I'm in the circus,'" said Alex "Stix" Stickels, one of the three show guides for the circus.

Some days, it's still hard for him to believe.

"I [got] an email one day saying, 'Hey, this is so and so from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. We saw some videos of you on social media. We think you'd be great for this show that we're putting together. Let's hop on a FaceTime, and we can tell you about it and see if you might be interested.' So a couple of phone calls later, here I am, I ran away to the circus," he said.

Stickels got his start in North Texas, at Lamar High School in Arlington.

"[I would tell him] he was always too aggressive and too loud compared to the rest of the kids. He adjusted, but it was always kind of fun to just say, 'Hey, Alex, just back off a little bit, ok?'" said Alan Lang, band director at Lamar High School.

Stickels was his student more than a few years ago.

"I knew he had the big performance energy and personality to be somebody who could steal a show. But never in a million years the leader of a circus," said Lang.

But Stickels loves the show and all that goes into it.

"The amount of hard work is almost indescribable that you spent your entire life learning this one discipline, to be able to do it at the highest level," Stickels said.

That's his message as he returned to the halls he used to walk – and plays his old school drum cues with a new generation of North Texas musicians.

"There are a lot of auditions and there's a lot of people that say, 'No.' You don't get every audition, and you have to learn how to deal with that," he said, "Learning how to overcome those things and not let it deter you. Not get bummed out or think, 'I can't do this.' You can absolutely do this, you have to keep going."

North Texans can see Stickels and the rest of the Ringling Bros. show starting Friday night. They are performing July 26 through 28 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, and from Aug. 2 through 4 at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth.