The Boy with Tape on his Face: Nothing Left To Say

Amid countless shows dealing with life, death, alcoholism, your dad, your mum, someone else's mum, it's about time the comedy scene was given some relief. "I'm a big fan of wordy standup," says 32 year-old Sam Wills aka The Boy With Tape On His Face, minus the tape, "but, without wanting to criticise anybody, I'm tired of hearing all that 'your mum died sadface' stuff. I think it's good to have something that's the complete opposite." For the enthusiasts among you, Wills' something-of-choice is Nashua 357 duct tape imported from New Zealand.

There have always been alternatives to your typical man-with-a-mic standup comedian, but now mainstream audiences are finally starting to get on board. They're lining up, for instance, to see David Trent innovating the crap out of a projector; or Tony Law, whose lampooning of standup convention earned him Chortle's 2012 Breakthrough Act award. Even controversial clowning maestro Doctor Brown is finally getting the recognition he deserves, having swept the board at the 2012 Melbourne Comedy Festival. It follows, then, that this should also be a big year for the silent guy with tape plastered over his gob.

Change is nothing new, of course, comedy's been shifting since the first caveman knocked himself out with a rock and his mate wet himself laughing. And silent comedy is certainly nothing we haven't seen before. "People are like 'oh it's so new and different' but I'm just clowning in front of an audience with some stuff," Wills says smiling. "It's more like the artform's been given a new lease of life. Probably because the market is so saturated with standup."  

The stand-out standup sets of the last few festivals have all been heavily thematic: Russell Kane won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for his treatise on class and grief, as did Brendon Burns for his innovative take on prejudice and the nature of offensiveness. Stewart Lee has pushed boundaries not only with the standup form but through an exploration of religious intolerance with 2006's career-defining 90s Comedian. But the consequence of all this is that now almost every comic in Edinburgh is shouting over each other, desperately trying to find something new to say.

Enter the Boy. Firstly, there's little in the way of emotion – no sympathy tales of a fucked up life or his hopelessness with women. "One of my rules is that The Boy is neutral, he has no motivation other than to entertain." A Tim Burton-inspired creation (taken from Burton's poem The Boy With Nails In His Eyes), The Boy is a 2D cartoon who just wants to play with his toys and get others in the room to help. 

Secondly, those who do help are never used for cheap laughs. "It's so easy to take the piss out of someone," he says. "When I was younger, a streetperformer picked me out of the crowd and embarrassed me for fifteen minutes straight. It was horrible."

With Wills, then, the notorious fear of sitting in the front row is turned on it's head, participants are the stars and treated as such. "You must respect the audience," he says firmly. "It's a share-the-moment kind of thing. You give them enough responsibility to contribute, without making them do anything uncomfortable. Hold this. Stand there. But they're totally integral." 

Then there's the difference between him and others in his field: the lack of actual mime ("The closest I get is having to make sure my hand movements are clear, but that's just so people know what to do") or any tricks to speak of. After years as a professional street performer, he then became a props comic, using the stunts learned during his time studying at Circo Arts (a circus school in New Zealand) to supplement his standup.

"I wanted a change," he says. "And I felt it was becoming too easy to fall back on my stunts, you know, getting an easy applause for a bit of juggling. You can get magic tricks from many, especially at the Fringe."

His solution was to "do nothing." Using audience participation and silence, his lengthy scenarios played out with props and toys taps into the timeless enjoyment of simple, back-to-basics visual humour.

It's this simplicity and, without wishing to sound pretentious, purity, that sets this year's More Tape, apart. It's the silence, the accessibility, the timelessness of it all. It reminds us what it's like to be a kid, and it's not until you leave the Pleasance Courtyard that you realise how much you needed it.

"The most important thing," Wills concludes, after giving it a lot of thought, "is that there is no message. You turn up, laugh, and nothing else."