There are splicers on the loose in Edinburgh. So far, they have taken blonde comic Sara Pascoe and given her the eyes and mane of a wolf. And they have taken actor Simon Callow's famous face, snipped it in half, and melded it with, well, practically everyone else's.
"Callow's got the perfect-sized face for this," says Steve Greer, one of the splicers. Greer and Neil Hobbs, producer and designer respectively for the Penny Dreadfuls sketch troupe, started making their flyer mash-ups as a tribute to the festival's legions of leafleters.
What began as a prank is now taking over Twitter (with the tag #flyerface). Either turned into collages, grafted on to the faces of other performers, or held over the real faces of those pictured, the mash-ups echo recent web phenomenon Sleeveface, which performed the same trick with album covers.
"If you sit in the Pleasance Courtyard for just a few minutes," says Greer, "you're approached by so many people handing out beautifully designed flyers. And right behind them come the venue staff, ready to recycle them. This is a way to make them last."
Greer's first foray into flyer fusion was with the publicity for Callow's play, Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford. He found that Callow's face meshed beautifully with those of the Jollie: Roger! sketch company. Others, including comics Stephen K Amos and Russell Howard, have undergone splicing but Callow remains a favourite thanks to the seemingly endless adaptability of his face. "Perhaps," says Greer, "that's the secret of his successful career."
