You’d think performing to massive crowds for laughs would be hard enough, but not for Dunedin-born comedian Sam Wills. In his latest routine, as The Boy with Tape on His Face, Wills performs on stage for up to an hour without talking at all. And audiences love it. 
SAM Wills has come a long way since his first job as apprentice to Timaru’s Jaffa the clown.
“I moved to Timaru at 12, and was given a magic kit as a going away present. I learnt some tricks, knocked on [Jaffa’s] door, and asked if he’d take me on. I enjoyed that the job was different, and a bit strange,’ he says.
Home schooled from the time he moved to Timaru, Wills had more spare time than most kids.
“I was the difficult, annoying kid in school, and I really didn’t like authority, so home schooling was great for me. I would get my day’s schoolwork done and then I could just focus on my juggling,” he says.
At 16, Wills told his parents he wanted to ditch his schooling, to pursue juggling.
“My mum said that if I was leaving my school education I needed a juggling education. She helped me get books about the history of juggling arts and then I taught myself. I’m so lucky, my parents were beyond supportive,” he says.
Aged 17, with not-so-good marks in school certificate, and what he saw as minimal career options, Wills got wind of The Christchurch Polytech Institute of Technology’s School of Circus Arts.
“I thought, ‘Joining the circus? Wow, I’m into that’,” he says.
Wills juggled his way happily through circus school, dreaming of a career in Las Vegas. Then, in one of many twists and turns, Wills got sidetracked by freak shows like the Jim Rose Circus and Tokyo Shock Boys.
“I started learning how to hammer nails up my nose and pull balloons through my nose and out my mouth,” he says.
During a ‘shock comedy’ street performance, Wills was spotted and asked to move to Auckland, to perform weekly at Sky City.
“It was quite hard. I was lucky to have a street performing background - so I knew that I could do shows to a few cabaret tables and end up with a full audience,” he says.
Simultaneously performing at the Classic Comedy Club, Wills began to gain momentum on the Auckland circuit, and in 2005 won the coveted Billy T James Award.
“After [the award], everyone was expecting me to learn new tricks and talk more, so I decided I needed to challenge myself, and try to do a show with zero tricks and no talking,” he says.
After one failed attempt as a mute, smiling character (“Where I accidentally spoke to the audience and ruined my whole act”), The Boy with Tape on His Face was born, and Wills began performing with his mouth fastened shut with electrical tape.
Now based in London, Wills has toured his ‘Tape Boy’ show all over the UK. As well as awards for best show, best show concept, and people’s choice at the New Zealand, Melbourne and Adelaide festivals, Wills was nominated for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2010, and won breakthrough act in the UK comedy site Chortle 2011 awards.
Wills brings his show to life with gestures, props, nostalgic music and a whole lot of audience participation.
“I can’t stand watching a comedian acting badly towards the audience, you have to treat them with so much respect. Without them I’m screwed, and so I genuinely want them to succeed. If a volunteer can trust me, the whole audience will be right into it,” he says.
Audience members should be careful about choosing a seat too close to the stage.
“I’m reasonably good at reading body language, I watch people interact with each other as they come in. Some couples sit in front row and just ignore each other for 20 minutes, while others come in looking like they’re on their first date, when in fact they’ve been together for years. You know that second couple is gonna be great, because they’re already having fun and they’ve got someone in the audience to support them. With big groups of guys it’s pretty easy to clock who the leader is, but the hardest part is choosing between the leader and the second in command - sometimes it’s best to leave the leader in the crowd to egg the rest of his mates on,” he says.  
The comedy circuit is full of yelling men telling sexist jokes, and yelling women making period jokes, so Tape Boy makes for a refreshing change.
“When I’m doing my circus sideshow I get away with being over the top and crass, but Tape Boy’s a sweet, endearing character. They’re both overextensions of certain parts of myself,” says Wills.
Wills says he’s shy in real life, and thinks this separation of personalities is common to many comedians.  
“On stage they’re always one thing, but their personality off-stage is often all insecurity and, ‘How’d I do?’ It’s all about social acceptance. Getting on stage and performing in front of an audience it the biggest way to say, ‘Like me. Please laugh at my jokes’, and when the audience laughs it validates their existence,” he says.
And when they don’t?
“Maybe they’re the comics you never see again.”
The Boy with Tape on His Face, San Francisco Bathhouse, May 2 – 7.