About

Born in Texas in the early 60's with the name Edward Robinson, Phoenix was raised on a racetrack in Florida. He studied art and drama, tinkered with the wrecked race cars and played drums throughout his school years. A member of the local theatre troupe and an entrepreneur, Phoenix was producing his own traveling magic show at the age of 14. He played both Riff Raff and Frank-n-Furter at the Rocky Horror Picture show and performed at the Mark II dinner theatre. Bored with life in a small town he GED'd out of school 2 years early and ran away with the circus.

Circus Days.
Starting with Ringling for his initial training and going by the clown name "Dock Holiday" he quickly advanced through the circuit until he was the Producing Clown for Allan C. Hill's Great American Circus. At that time he was in charge of the largest clown alley in the largest 3 ring tent based circus in the USA. He was responsible for the daily operations of a working clown alley with an average of 8 to 12 clowns. Designing and building elaborate props for the clowns and many other acts he gained a reputation for good solid props and one of a kind set pieces. After experiencing his second elephant rampage he decided it was time to find a safer line of work than clowning in the circus.

Step right up and drown the Joker.
Taking his make up and costumes and working a season in a Carnival Dunk Tank made him enough scratch to build his own tank and customize an old U-haul to haul it around with. He toured with two tanks, his own and the one owned by "Smile-a-while" which he managed. Insulting people for 4 hours a day while perched over a freezing pool of water. Oh what fun! "Drown the Joker" was modeled after the Joker villain in the Batman franchise and was wildly popular. It was at this point, "Doc" as he was known, took an interest in the sideshow business. Selling the tank and truck he took a very "hands-on" management position with Rick Cales Sideshows.

Alive and on the inside!
After spending some time learning the care and feeding of an entire petting zoo full of "freak" animals, he took the Petting Zoo and a "Zoma the Wild Boy" show out on tour. Working in all aspects of the shows he acquired skills such as sword swallowing and fire manipulation as well as the ability to talk non-stop to a crowd. He did everything from painting banners to ordering feeder mice for the snakes in the Xoma pit. He relished the freedom of the traveling show and learned more about performing during this phase of his life than any other time. Everyone should learn to shove an ice pick up their nose! This period formed the basis for Phoenix's' life work, which is to keep the sideshow arts alive and just go through life making people smile.

When the kid playing "Xoma" quit, Ed was forced to don the tribal make up and ripped up clothes and take his place in the pit. The show must go on.  "Xoma" was a wild boy sideshow in a box. The character sat in an 8' x 8' plywood box with 4' high walls. People would walk into the tent and up to the box to look over the top and into it. Inside was Edward as "Xoma", with about 20 live snakes of various types, a couple scorpions, some tarantulas and a Tagoo lizard or two. With a painted on skull face he never spoke a word in the pit and played the wild boy part with passion but always knew it was a short term gig. With snakes in his mouth and crawling through his hair he would scare people so bad they would run for the "Great Egress". He played the Xoma character for a few months until the season ended and Phoenix decided to travel in a new direction.

Free Beer!
Returning to his winter home in Fla. Edward wrote a show for the Renaissance Fair circuit called "Lord Xavier's Suicide Thrill Show" that highlighted his sword swallowing and fire eating abilities. He made a quick video and booked an entire 8 month season in just 2 weeks time. Working on the circuit for many years under the name Lord Xavier he enjoyed top billing at many fairs and had his own fan club called the "FoXes" (Friends Of Xavier's). Moving into management at the smaller fairs for experience he soon held management positions at several fairs. He was Fair director at Kings Company in Ohio and Sight director at the Castle of Muskogee amongst others. Choosing the Mount Hope Estate & Winery as a home base he took the position of Production Manager and moved on-site where he stayed for quite a few years. In charge of daily operations for the Pa. Ren. Faire and the Estate Mansion shows which ran almost year round, going dark only 2 months for winter. He was responsible for 12 stages with constantly running shows during the fair season. Over 600 actors and performers and the mansion venue that specialised in school days shows featuring various famous historical themes and over 2000 school kids a day bussed in and ferried around the mansion to see the shows. Building giant special FX stages and taking classes in stage combat and Pyro-techniques Xavier was kept busy 24 hours a day. During this time he also learned Falconry, smithing, forging, period brewing and several other Renaissance arts. He also started producing Fire walking classes and demonstrations. After 6 very successful years he decided it was time to take a new direction and went into haunted house and hay ride design.

OOOOOOOOOOklahoma!
Bouncing around the country designing stages, booths and theme rides Phoenix ended up in Muskogee Ok. as site director of the Castle of Muskogee. This was a relatively new venue and there was lots of building to do. New stages and period buildings. Campgrounds and ride trails. The entire property was rebuilt for the fair and Halloween shows. In charge of daily operations for the entire site Phoenix found himself once again behind a desk. After the contract was up he went to Las Vegas to build and fight combat robots.

It's robot fighting time.
The show Battlebots had just come on TV and Phoenix found himself drawn to it. Within 3 months of seeing his first episode Phoenix had built his first "bot" and was competing in San Francisco. He soon found himself working for the Battlebots production company training engineers, builders and regular family people to talk to the camera and helped theme the teams. While building colorful and crowd favorite robots, actually winning a championship eluded him until he was invited to compete at Robot Wars in London, where the best bots in the world got together. After losing his first couple fights he managed to hit a winning streak and won through the Robot Rebellion episode and as the last robot running was immediately destroyed by Sir-KillALot, then had the honor of being a featured builder on Extreme Warriors season two. In fact the very last thing you see that season (on film) is Phoenix's face.

After appearing on all the major robot combat shows he started producing his own event in Las Vegas called RoboJoust. RoboJoust was highly successful with over 75 robots from around the world competing twice a year. This was "Street Fight" themed and didn't use the mass weapons that destroyed the bots. It was more a demolition derby style competition. Gear head reality TV was just cranking up and robots were fading out so Phoenix found himself a new career as a reality TV personality. After a couple colorful and unforgettable episodes of Monster garage he started working as an on-call consultant for Original Productions. Now after 5 years of on and off camera work Phoenix once again felt it was time to move along. Well actually his teeth decided it this time.

Taking a break.
Over 20 years of eating fire baked all the enamel off his teeth and they had started rotting from the back and falling out of his mouth. Phoenix had to take 2 years off of performing to get himself a new mouth. Ten thousand dollars later and sporting a beautiful new set of "snap-in" teeth, Phoenix has gone back on the road.

Currently,
Phoenix is living in San Diego while running XE3 studios and booking his new tour with the all new and improved "Dangerous Blades of Phoenix Blaze" show. Building art cars and period pipes in his spare time, he is available for corporate seminars, short term appearance contracts, classes, educational venues and Performance art shows.

Final Word, by Phoenix Blaze
Life is an adventure!
I was born with the wanderlust and a thirst for knowledge. I knew early on I was meant for the stage and had a love of fire and anything mechanical. I have strived to use these attributes to allow myself to travel and meet new people while leaving as small a mark as I can on the earth and everyone I meet with a smile. I love to travel, I love to perform and I love to build weird stuff. So I became a traveling performer who builds weird stuff! Pretty slick huh?