Gabe Ginsberg
Tape Face has something new in store for audiences at Harrah’s Showroom.
Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021 | 2 a.m.
He’s added several members to the cast of a show that was formerly a solo effort. There’s a friendly back-and-forth conversation with the audience before the performance begins, quite a change from the days when the star of the show never spoke a word throughout the night. And even though the audience must be 25 feet away from the stage, the first few rows are filled with wig-wearing mannequins, just to keep things slightly strange.
These are just a few of the changes Sam Wills has made to his Tape Face show at Harrah’s Showroom in order to bring something funny and memorable to Las Vegas audiences these days, when they need something funny more than ever.
“The dummies are pretty funny,” Wills says on this week’s episode of the Sun on the Strip podcast. “We’ve become really relaxed. I do the meet-and-greet thing before I do the Tape Face stuff now, and it’s advanced even more because I’m onstage from the moment the audience comes in now. We just hang out and chat and I get a chance to tell people it’s different now, find out where people are from and do the basic kind of hosting, but it’s also a chance to get a feel for what the audience is going to be like.”
Wills has been performing as the silent Tape Face character for nearly 15 years, so the unforeseen chance to verbally interact with his audience is a welcome change of pace for the veteran comedian and former street performer.
“It’s way too much fun, to the point where my stage manager has to tell me to tighten things up and stop talking,” he says. “I have to remember they have come there to see me not talk. But I’m enjoying it. It’s really nice to have a voice again and play around and refine that style of storytelling.”
Originally landing at Harrah’s in 2018, the show reopened on November 11 and is currently running at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday at Harrah’s Showroom. It was forced to move to the larger venue from its normal home, the House of Tape, in order to meet current restrictions on gatherings and entertainment events.
While producing an altered version of the show during the pandemic has sparked creativity for the whole Tape Face team, Wills is definitely looking forward to the day he can move the operation back where it belongs and put on the show people have come to expect.
“This is very much a COVID show. We have taken these conditions and made a bespoke item for this [time] and I don’t think anyone wants to be doing these shows under these conditions,” he says. “It’s like a creative corner. You’re backed into this situation and you make something out of it, otherwise you sit in the corner and wait.”
Find this week’s Vegas entertainment news, interviews and more every Wednesday with the Sun on the Strip podcast.
