Possibly the best gag you'll ever see

Mixing mime and stand-up, The Boy with Tape on his Face is a very different kind of comedy. Its New Zealand- born creator Sam Wills reveals all to Siobhán Kane

SAM WILLS was given a magic set when he was 12, and after "making" his parents "watch the same tricks over and over", he found out that there was a clown in the neighbourhood doing shows. He knocked on his door and asked to be his assistant, and ever since has been filtering clowning, magic and vaudeville into his comedy act, which has more in common with Harold Lloyd and Memoirs of a Sword Swallower than it does traditional stand-up.

The Boy with Tape on his Face has been Wills's most popular project, and was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010. He has become one of the festival's adopted sons, even though he only first brought the show there in 2010.

"My time in Edinburgh was great fun because I got to experience both aspects of the festival. I took a kids' show called The Prince of Cringe, as well as the evening show of The Boy . . . The kids' show was fun but we were not getting the audiences at all. So I would sell out and have standing ovations in the evening, only to be greeted with having to flyer for several hours in the morning to get five people to see the kids' show. I think that kept my feet very much on the ground."

In one sense, that is a typical Edinburgh experience, yet Wills had several years of success in New Zealand, before moving to London for a kind of re-imagining and re-emergence into a different kind of scene.

"New Zealand is a very supportive scene. One of the joys of my time in New Zealand was the fact that I could have an idea that afternoon and then make a call to the club owner and ask for a spot, and within seven hours, I would have found out if an idea worked. Over in London, you have to spend a lot longer waiting just to get stage time. I love living there, but I am very happy that I developed my act back home, and in Australia, as I do think that it helped me rise through the circuit a bit faster."

Wills's approach to comedy reflects a great love of Coney Island sideshows, carni-culture, and counterculture references - think Katherine Dunn's Geek Love expressed through stand-up; intelligent, playful and different.

"I love those style shows, and when I was spending my time as a sideshow comedian, it was something that I couldn't get enough of, but I do think that the time of that style has passed. Jim Rose was once the biggest sideshow performer in the world, but shows like Britain's Got Talent have replaced the freakshows. I am a big fan of the skills that vaudeville performers have, but I wanted to make The Boy a show without skills, as some of my previous shows have been very skill-heavy. One of my biggest influences was Tim Burton when he was in the Beetlejuice era. It was that style and look that I love, whereas a traditional influence for me would be Buster Keaton, for the deadpan look."

In a world that unfortunately elevates over-sharing, Wills's comedy is unusual because The Boy is so expressive - and communicates without saying a word.

"I never went into this show with any sort of message or social commentary - there are enough comedians banging that drum - but I am aware that we live in a very "share everything" culture. That is one of the reasons why I enjoy my time without a voice. I won an award in New Zealand for my style of talking-prop comedy, but I felt that audiences and my peers expected me to just talk more and learn more tricks, and I don't like it when people expect things of me.

"There is a place for it in the comedy industry, but just like the freakshow that was and is Jim Rose, the comedians who share everything end up running out of stuff to share, or people who care. Sometimes I think that comedians forget the key factor of just being funny."

As well as being very funny, The Boy encourages people to reconnect with that childlike state of being playful for playfulness' sake, a place of real imagination.

"That's a key part to the show. I think that so many people forget to just take a moment and play. Your imagination is like a muscle, and if you don't keep using it, it becomes lazy."

* Wills plays Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin on October 25th and the Radisson Live Lounge, Galway on 26th at 8pm