Comedy. Dance. Magic. Music. The shows that have reopened after Las Vegas’ long entertainment shutdown are easy to categorize, and perhaps that makes it easier to imagine how they’re operating in the current, restricted environment.
Tape Face is hard to describe. It’s a person and it’s a show. Both are very funny, but the person never speaks a word while he’s onstage. Tape Face relies heavily on audience interaction to spark surprise, and builds on that comedic connection throughout the show. The uniquely generous creativity of the person made the show a somewhat unlikely but significant success at the House of Tape, a makeshift 200-seat theater at Harrah’s Las Vegas.
It reopened this week in a bigger space—the 500-seat Harrah’s Showroom—with a larger audience of 250 socially distanced people. Like all returning shows, the onstage activity also had to be reconfigured, but Tape Face the person decided to go in an entirely new direction, installing an interactive conversation with alter ego/show creator Sam Wills to open the production.
“It came about because I realized I really wanted to have that chance to talk to the audience beforehand. I wanted to reassure them that I know it’s pretty weird right now; it’s weird for everyone,” Wills says. “For me, it came back to connecting to the audience as a person, not an act, and being able to say, ‘These are the conditions and rules for what we’re going to do together, and it’s going to be great,’ and to have a chance to talk and let them ask questions.”
After humble beginnings as a clown and street performer, the New Zealand-born Wills originally created this character as The Boy With Tape on His Face on something of a whim, to prove that a silent performance—inspired in part by Tim Burton and Buster Keaton—could be great. The character evolved into a show Wills has toured around the world, with a boost from an appearance on America’s Got Talent.
Wills’ emphasis on connecting to the audience as human first and then as performer isn’t surprising to fans and followers. He has intentionally avoided virtual shows during the pandemic months, and his occasional social media posts have been focused on self-care and gentle activism.
“For me, the real transition was turning off and shutting down and realizing me doing shows is not what’s important right now, but what can I do is to sort of sit back for a bit and really reevaluate what I’m doing,” he says. “Obviously, there were a number of people immediately banging out Zoom shows, but I didn’t want to get involved that way. I have international friends living in other countries, and watching shows like that was like watching a newborn horse walk. I didn’t want to start knocking out content I knew I wouldn’t want to keep doing.”
Tape Face is one of the weirdest shows on the Strip, and for Wills, keeping it weird means boiling it down to its essence. “At this point it’s very much a theatrical piece, and we’ve got a lot of ideas [on] how to evolve the show slowly once it’s breathing and living again. But at this point with no audience interaction, it’s kind of nice to enjoy the surrealism of this weird clown character,” he says.
“Coming from that street performer background, you learn to be fluid in any situation. If it starts to rain, you can either bail or carry on. So we can adjust to whatever rule is thrown at us, adapt and find a way.”
TAPE FACE Tuesday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m., $69. Harrah’s Showroom, 855-234-7469.
