Professor Orbax welcomes everyone to the show
The eBar hosted a sideshow on Mon, Oct. 3 to celebrate the first reveal of a trading card set designed by artist and sideshow performer, Mike James. University of Guelph’s own physics professor Jason Thomas, more commonly known as Professor Burnaby Q. Orbax, is featured in the set for his comedic sideshow act. The card set is named “Welcome to the Show” and celebrates 20 sideshow performers of the modern day.
For the duration of the show, Orbax was the egotistical and chatty host while James played the down-trodden partner just trying to get a word in edgewise. Orbax began by performing a trick called “The Human Blockhead,” in which he hammered a nail into his nose. He went on to put a fork in his nose and then a larger nail. For the larger nail, he enlisted the help of an audience member who helped him pull the nail back out of his head.
“…the audience member then had to staple the card to James’s chest.”
James, after being introduced by Orbax as “Monsieur Stinky Pants,” followed this act by contorting his body through a tennis racket; a trick which required him to dislocate his own shoulder. Next, James had a new member of the audience pick a card from the deck, then place it back in. After finding the correct card, the audience member then had to staple the card to James’s chest.
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All throughout the performance, Orbax introduced their acts, told stories of his history with James, teased the audience, and cracked jokes. The final trick involved James having a cinderblock broken over his groin, much to the audience’s amazement. For the duration of the performance, the audience responded with some heckling of their own and with loud laughter as the duo played out their tricks.
“Live entertainment has a more visceral effect on people because they’re not as used to seeing things up close.”
The sideshow has a long tradition of being the show at the circus where you find all of the strange acts and items. Some sideshows are very spooky or hardcore, but James and Orbax like to keep theirs funny and silly in order to better engage with the audience.
In an interview with The Ontarion, Orbax explained, “Live entertainment has a more visceral effect on people because they’re not as used to seeing things up close.”
He believes that with modern day technology we’ve become desensitized and he enjoys using the show to get a reaction from the audience—whatever that reaction may be.
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James and Orbax gave their first side show performance in 1998 at a Guelph community barbecue. They then decided to test their limits to see what sort of tricks they could come up with.
“The sideshow is a career of the head holes,” says Orbax, “It’s just trying to figure out where everything goes and what you can get away with.”
The duo has worked together for many years, but this sideshow was the first performance they’d given together in nearly a decade. Orbax said that he was most excited by the project because it gave him and James the opportunity to work together once again.
“The sideshow is a career of the head holes…”
“It’s crazy, [the trading cards include] 20 of some of the biggest sideshow acts that are happening now. It was so neat that so many people were […] 100 per cent on board right off the bat,” Orbax explained. “We’re in a card set with Jim Rose, who’s the founder of modern day sideshow, James Taylor who’s the historian of modern day sideshow, and entertainers and friends of ours from all over the world.”
The cards are hand drawn by James who is an artist and graphic designer for well-known trading card sets such as Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In an interview with The Ontarion, James said that he was particularly excited for this trading card set because it was his first independent project and he knew that nothing like this had been done before. He has worked hard to make these cards a reality and hopes to be able to continue working on them for a long time.