The job offered by the PR firm seemed simple enough -- easy pickings for a pair of comic writers who were also fans of the immensely popular Harry Potter fantasy books.
Jefferson Turner and Daniel Clarkson took the gig, entertaining a line of restless fans at a bookstore as they waited for a midnight release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth book in the series.
The duo turned the performance into a roaring retrospective of the first five books, delighting the crowd as they waited to get their hands on the newest installment.
"There were about 1,000 people at this bookstore," Turner said. "We were hoarse by the end, but we thought we might be on to something."
It turned out they were.
A decade later, "Potted Potter," as it was eventually titled, has been filling venues in the United States and Europe since 2006 using the same formula.
Called "the unauthorized Harry experience," the show condenses the seven Harry Potter books into an 80-minute show, with Turner and Clarkson playing an array of characters from Hogwarts, and even mixing in an interactive game of Quidditch.
Turner admits part of the success of the show is due to the widespread appeal of the books themselves, and the movies that followed starting in 2001.
"There really is nothing else like it," Turner said. "It appeals to all walks of life. There isn't a demographic for it. We've related it to Beatlemania, just the number of people who enjoy it."
That lack of a target demographic is obvious from the audiences at the "Potted Potter" shows, according to Turner.
"We'll have 80 percent kids on a Saturday afternoon show," he said, "and in the evening we'll have 500 people and no kids. The seniors love it as well. It's something they could share with their grandkids."
The show evolved over the years, from a short 15-minute presentation to its current form. While it focuses on the books, Turner said they try to keep it current with occasional pop culture references and jokes. And although they stay committed to the main plot lines, the show emphasizes entertainment over jamming in every detail of the thousands of pages of source material.
"There are some jokes that the super geeks, like Dan and I, will get and they will be very proud that they got it," Turner said. "But we're not afraid to ditch 400 pages of plot so Dan can put on a silly hat and talk in a silly voice. We really do tell the core story."
The show first took off when it was selected to perform at the UK's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, considered one of the world's largest arts and entertainment festivals.
During the 2006 festival, the duo was extended to perform for a third week, a testament to the show's success. During the final week, a distraught box office employee and her manager came to see Turner and Clarkson after a performance.
Despite the show selling out, she couldn't forget about having to turn away a late-arriving patron, a patron she believed to be Harry Potter creator and author J.K. Rowling.
"That was an urban myth for years," Turner said. "We eventually met her at an event for her charity. She came up and said she had tried to come to one of the shows but it was sold out. Ever since then, we take one ticket off sale everywhere we perform. I mean, turning her away once can be seen as an accident, but doing it more than once might seem a bit mean."
The show had an off-Broadway stretch and was buoyed by a positive review in The New York Times in 2012.
"That was the highlight so far," Turner said. "That was make-or-break whether the show would continue."
Turner and Clarkson have continued to expand the brand with "Potted Sherlock," which premiered in London's West End in 2014 and has already had a touring run in the U.S.
But even a decade later, they still have an affinity for playing young Potter and the characters in the show that launched their careers.
"We genuinely love Harry Potter," he said. "We're huge advocates of child literacy. It's a story that intrigues kids. It's sort of a British hero. We don't have many of those. We tend to be the villains."
Potted Potter
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Discovery Theatre
Tickets: $38-$66 at centertix.net and 907-263-ARTS