Following his headline act in the Christchurch Buskers Festival, Alex Casey chats to Sam Wills about spending two decades as the elusive Tape Face.
It’s a Thursday night at The Isaac Theatre Royal in Ōtautahi, and the fly swats, rubbish bags, and coat hangers littered across the stage make it seem like someone is holding an impromptu garage sale. But not long after Tape Face dawdles out, eyes rimmed with heavy kohl, hair spiked to the heights of mid-2000s emo, and mouth concealed behind black duct tape, do these humble household objects quickly become the stars of the show.
Soon enough, an old pair of loafers takes on a new life as one of the Jackson 5, oven gloves morph into star-crossed lovers, and an audience member who looks like your uncle brings the house down with one simple dance move. Tape Face’s audience-inclusive mime comedy has been transforming the inane into the magical around the world for two decades. But what does the person behind the tape have to say about being our most successful silent export?
These days he performs a six-nights-a-week residency in Las Vegas, but Sam Wills’ performance origins go way back to 1980s Timaru. After receiving a magic kit at the age of 12, he honed his showmanship by “stalking” Jaffa, the only professional clown in town. “I followed him around and watched his shows over and over,” Wills laughs over Zoom from his home in Vegas. “I found out where he lived, knocked on his door, and auditioned myself on his doorstep.”
Working for Jaffa on the weekends as a teenager, Wills then moved to Christchurch to study circus arts just as the Buskers Festival was its infancy. “When I was a young student, I would just be in awe of these incredible performers from all around the world and I would just watch them over and over and over,” he recalls. His first show was in the Buskers Festival in 1999, a “really bad” act that involved “four fire clubs and two dozen raw eggs”.
After a few years of “freak show stunts” including hammering nails up his nose and eating lightbulbs, Wills moved to Auckland and started doing stand-up comedy. In 2005, his show about his time as a street performer – Dance Monkey Dance – won him the Billy T Award. “I think everyone had that expectation that I would just keep doing more of the same, so I just tried to do the opposite and found a silent character that had no tricks at all.”
Soon after, he started playing with the character of Tape Face, a wide-eyed mime with a satchel of surprises. “In Auckland, at that time especially, there was a whole bunch of comedians doing traditional stand up, on a stage, with a red curtain behind them,” he says. “Then I would come out and I could see the audience go ‘what hell is this?’. I still love those moments of confusion, where the audience goes ‘how can this be a thing’ and then slowly start to understand it.”
As for the persona itself, Wills says that Tape Face is essentially himself as a young boy. “There’s a sort of inquisitiveness to it and silliness and play. I think the main word that I always latch onto is play – to just get up there and just interact and play with people.” The eyeliner and hair is a hangover from his time as a goth in the 90s, and Tim Burton was also a large creative influence. Surprisingly, he didn’t get into silent comedy stars until after Tape Face was born.
“A lot of people think I must really like Charlie Chaplin but, to be honest, I can’t stand him,” he laughs. “I much prefer Buster Keaton because he was always the underdog and he was a wee bit cooler than Chaplin. Buster Keaton is also known as stone face – he had that no expression thing going on. I definitely picked that up from him for Tape Face because, if you just do a long blank stare at people, you can always find a lot of comedy that way.”
In 2007 he returned to Christchurch, and the Buskers Festival, but this time as Tape Face (then known as The Boy With Tape on His Face) and won the people’s choice award. “It’s pretty cool because, with that prize money, I was actually able to fund going to the Melbourne Comedy Festival which got me spotted and started a bit of a reputation – I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that without Christchurch and that iron chicken award.”
Wills spent a decade in the UK touring and honing his act at the Edinburgh Fringe, before America’s Got Talent came calling. “Something people don’t realise is that shows like AGT have talent scouts who spend all their time looking for people. They had actually been after us for a number of years, but the timing never worked out.” In 2016, the schedules aligned, and Tape Face entered the “bananas” machine of America’s Got Talent.
In his first “audition” on the show, he unleashed his now-famous pair of amorous oven gloves to a standing ovation from the audience and judges alike. “I like the fact that we don’t know who you are or what you are going to do,” said Simon Cowell. “Simple, clever, unique, funny – brilliant.” Heidi Klum thought he was “creepy” at first, “but then I really, truly loved it.” Howie Mandel put it plainly – and accurately: “I think your life has changed tonight.”
After that first video went up on Youtube, Wills says things did change pretty quickly, and his dream of a Vegas residency finally seemed like a possibility. “My goal was to try and stick around for as long as you could. You never want to win these type of shows, because you’re then stuck in a terrible contract for the rest of your life. But in America, television is still the be all and end all – if you are on TV, you are famous. In New Zealand, I feel like it’s not as huge of a deal.”
Tape Face didn’t win America’s Got Talent, but he didn’t have to. He landed his first Vegas residency in 2017, and has been a mainstay in Sin City ever since. “The whole thing was bananas. It’s so not normal,” he laughs. “I’m still recovering from it.” Now with a “relentless” six-nights-a-week residency at the MGM Grand, the Tape Face multiverse appears to be ever expanding, sometimes even with other people stepping into the role (to mixed reception).
And when he’s not sloughing off eyeliner and playing vintage Mario Brothers to unwind, Wills is continuing to dream up new directions for Tape Face. “I’m playing with the idea of turning myself into a firework, which I think is pretty funny,” he says. Whatever he takes to the stage, he’ll likely debut it in front of a home crowd. “I always write new things with the intention of showing it in New Zealand first, because Kiwi audiences are always so damn honest.”
Back at the Isaac Theatre Royal, after taking us through a fierce Jedi battle, a 1970s dance floor, and the last hole of a PGA final, Tape Face’s Buskers Festival show ended on Thursday night with one last spectacle that had the whole theatre jumping out of their seats and shrieking like little kids. But as the lights went up and we quietly filed out into the unseasonal cold of the real world, that damn understated Kiwi honesty Wills mentioned wasn’t far away.
“Well,” said one woman to her friend, “that was a bit different, eh?”
The World Buskers Festival is on in Ōtautahi from Jan 24 until Feb 4.