About the Sidewalk Circus

Hi, Peter Shanks here. I worked as a clown over 20 years ago, long before the World Wide Web was even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye. In those pre-internet days information was harder to come by; garnered from watching and talking to other performers and reading the rare book on the subject. Nowadays I teach in the Arts and I.T. department at Bathurst TAFE and the internet has fundamentally changed our culture. I almost can't avoid finding new ideas for performance, and have decided to gather some of them together here on this blog. Here's why...

In 2007 I was asked if any of our digital media students would like to take some footage of the Catupult Festival in Bathurst, which is a bi-annual festival showcasing the skills of young circus and physical theatre performers from around Australia. I took a shine to the whole event, and in 2008 I was invited to sit on the steering committee for the next festival.

During one committee meeting I inadvertantly volunteered to organise some semi-spontaneous street performances. We wanted to raise the awareness of the Catapult festival within the local community (and to have a bit of fun... and to make the world a slightly happier place). So, with those goals in mind the sidewalk circus was born.

I'm always looking for new material - anything that might be erected, created, drawn or performed in the street; so if you've got any suggestions, please leave a comment on the site or send me an email: pshanks@megalong.com

Break a leg,
   Peter (a.k.a. botheredbybees)