Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada

The year is 2006, the festival is the Edmonton International Street Performer’s Festival, The show is “The Juggling Sherpas” a show that I created with Geoff Cobb aka Thom Sellectomy… The premise behind the show is that two Sherpas from Nepal find themselves in Edmonton armed only with a book on street performing and their Sherpa Know-How to help them make enough money to return to their homeland.

The reality of all of this was that Geoff and I had joked for a couple of years about how so many new shows that seemed to be cropping up were so formulaic that they seemed like they were following the same patterns and rules that must have come from the Master Guide to Street Performing… “THE BOOK” as we called it. The joke lead to the idea for the show… The idea for the show lead to us actually creating “THE BOOK” that we had been joking about… I think this paragraph from the Introduction sums it up best –

The book that you now hold in your hands, So You Want to be a Street Performer, gives you all of the information that you will need to become a street performer, freeing you from the bonds of corporate oppression and allowing you to be your own boss. So You Want to be a Street Performer is your Emancipation Proclamation from the tyranny of day to day life. This book contains all of the insights, tips and hidden gems required for you to earn a living on the street. This guide will come to sere as your bible, outlining a code that will guide you through a life of street performing. This tome will serve as your very own Declaration of Independence!

During the creation of “THE BOOK” my primary job seemed to be to proof read, but Geoff insisted that I come up with a couple of the elements that can be found in the the Appendix of “THE BOOK.” My most significant contribution seems to have been with the creation of “The Denaid Equation” which explains how and why successful street performers area able to get money put into their hats. This purely mathematical formula will actually make sense to anyone who has ever done a show on the street and though it’s liberally sprinkled with humour there are truths that ring true beyond the comedy.

Why was it called “The Denaid Equation” you ask… Well we came up with faux pen names and characters for the guys who actually wrote the book. These names were created by taking all of the letters from our names and re-arranging them into new names.

Geoff Cobb became: Brofy C. FeBoge

David Aiken became: Kavi Denaid

Thus “The Denaid Equation” was credited to the faux pen name of yours truly.

Fancy reading the entire text? Well it’s just a click away… After discussing things with my co-author I received permission to upload a pdf version of “THE BOOK” that I helped created by scanning all of the pages of one of the original copies of “THE BOOK” from our time at the 2006 Edmonton Street Performers Festival and uploading it here. Either click the previous link on any of the links for “THE BOOK” throughout this post to view the text on-line or download it to your computer.