There are dozens of words one could apply to Andrew Potter. Cautious isn’t one of them.

After graduating from URI in 1980, Potter and a buddy moved to San Francisco to pursue their dream of becoming performance artists.

“I liked the idea of writing, directing and being self-employed,” Potter said.

Given the high cost of San Francisco real estate and the relatively low pay of street performers, Potter and his performing partner took the only apartment they could afford: A beer tank in a shuttered brewery that the owner was renting out for $200 a month.

“You get what you pay for,” Potter said. “We were the only ones there who were working to make a living. The only ones who marched out the door everyday and went to work.”

Potter ultimately spent 15 years in California, performing as a storyteller and all-around vaudeville act. He returned to the East Coast in 1996, after he had married and had a child.

“I got tired of performing all the time,” he said.

Today, Potter is rejuvenated and has expanded his repertoire to include multimedia shows. His latest show recounts his experiences as a street performer in the High Street Circus, as his San Francisco act was called.

The act included comedy, juggling, fire eating and unicycle riding.

One feature of the show had Potter juggling six objects – a rubber

chicken, a fire torch, a brush, a toilet plunger, a racquet and a club – while riding a unicycle.

Although Potter and his partner started off as jugglers, they weren’t very good at it. So instead, they took a different approach.

“Juggling was difficult, so we decided to make it look more diffi cult than it really was. There was a lot of dropping things and soon we’d find ourselves in this situation, this problem,” he said.

The tension hooked their audiences.

“They would get on our side and start rooting for us,” Potter said.

This approach of taking a liability and incorporating it into a show worked well for Potter. It led to his act capturing first place in a street performance contest in Milan, Italy. “We didn’t know the language and were asking ourselves ‘What are we going to do?’”

The solution: Learn a few key phrases and turn their various body parts into human cheat sheets.

“When we needed to speak, I would look at the appropriate body part for guidance,” Potter said. “The audience would feel sympathy and help us with pronunciations. It worked so well we won the contest.”

Although street performing may not hold the glamour of traditional theater, the feel of street performing worked for Potter.

“It’s very intimate, no fourth wall,” he said. “You talk to your audience and they get to talk to you.”

A new artistic vision

With a past full of successes, Potter has again thrown caution to the wind. He has recast his art, elevating his storytelling and street performing to multimedia stage presentations.

After earning a master’s degree in video production from Emerson College in Boston, Potter was inspired to create a new artistic vision.

His latest production, “The Road to High Street,” is based on his life and personal experiences. The show still uses storytelling, but with additional layers of music, photos, special lighting, videos and a large screen to capture the images.

Potter doesn’t feel he or his audiences will lose anything in the re-vamp.

“I think I can create the same kind of intimacy,” he said. “Visuals are very, very strong. You can describe something as much as you want, but people may not see it in their minds. Multimedia adds a certain clarity.”

For example, the beer tank Potter used to call home is part of the show and most people, said Potter, “couldn’t visualize that bizarre space without a visual.”

But “The Road to High Street” is not a simple rehashing of Potter’s San Francisco years.

There are deeper messages to be gained from his story, he said. One is “going after your dream. Doing something that we really believe in.”

Another, he said, is “the personal struggle of figuring out what to do in life and taking a risk to achieve it.”

Potter learned such lessons not just by performing, but also from his father.

“My father went through a similar thing. He wanted to be a boat designer, but his father talked him out of it,” he said.

Potter’s father ended up going into business before serving in the Navy during World War II. After returning from the war, his father realized, “Life is short.”

Eventually, he got a job with the boat builder Pearson and, according to Potter, “was instrumental in the effort to create the Triton fiberglass boat, which was the hit of the 1959 boating world.

Like father, like son – following a dream to success.

“My life,” Potter said, “has been very satisfying.”

Andrew Potter will perform his multimedia show, “The Road to High Street” at the Jamestown Recreation Center this Saturday, Oct. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. The show is part of Pajamarama, a benefit for Bridges Inc., a local human services agency that supports individuals with developmental disabilities. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for children and can be purchased at the Bridges’ office at 11 Clinton Ave. or at Baker’s Pharmacy.

Potter’s short video, “Stories from the Beavertial Light,” can be found at www.jamestownpress. com.