As Tap Out! (or I’ll hit you again) prepares to make its Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut, writer and director Conor Dye is stepping into new territory with a play that blends dark comedy and uncomfortable truths. Drawing on personal experience, cultural observation and a striking premise, Dye’s first full-length staged work marks a significant moment in their creative journey.
“I graduated from university in 2020, which was a great year to do so,” Conor begins, reflecting on a disrupted start to their career. “I was developing a TV show and a feature film, both projects kind of collapsed in the span of two weeks.” That setback led to a pivot. “I ended up helping friends who had play scripts, initially dramaturgically and editing them. And then through that began producing.” Over time, work across theatre offices and independent productions followed, but the goal remained clear. “The goal was kind of always to come back to my own things, and to writing.”
That return arrives with Tap Out, which Conor describes as “the first full length play of mine that anyone’s ever going to see.” They add, “There are others that either sit in drawers, but this is the first one that everyone’s going to be able to literally see in the space.”
At its core, the play centres on a man searching for meaning in increasingly destructive ways. “Tap Out is a show about one man who is absolutely just lost in his life, looking for something to give him purpose,” Conor explains. “He ends up finding that in going out at night and fighting random people in the street, it’s a 60 minute downward spiral.” Beneath that stark premise lies a wider exploration. “It’s trying to find purpose through something completely ridiculous, and how that could be terrible for yourself and other people.”
The idea itself has an unusual origin. “Years ago I saw this screenshot of a post of a guy being like, ‘I’m going out and fighting people, am I doing the wrong thing?’” Conor recalls. “That kind of sat in the back of my head for a while.” When the time came to develop a Fringe piece, the memory resurfaced. “It just goes to show you never really forget everything, the things that are important stick.”
While the premise may seem extreme, the themes it touches are rooted in real-world conversations around masculinity and mental health. “One of the core questions was what makes a person become like that,” they say. “Hurt people will hurt other people, unless you go through that process of self‑interrogation.” Conor emphasises the importance of listening widely during the writing process. “It was spending time talking to people, men, women, people outside that gender binary, everyone’s had very different, but also very scary similar experiences.”
That cultural backdrop continues to evolve. “There’s so much in media right now, really questioning the idea of men and violence and how those intersect,” Conor notes. “We say we don’t need those instincts anymore, but if they’re still there, what are you doing with them?” In Tap Out, that question plays out in stark form. “In this instance, this person unfortunately takes it out into the streets, into other people’s lives.”
Despite its darker themes, the piece is consciously laced with humour. “The show is kind of told through this one person’s perspective,” they explain. “The comedy really comes through in how his perspective sits with other people, the things that annoy us all.” Conor describes it as “a strange sort of observational stand-up show, where you can’t see anything, only he can,” adding that audiences are invited to question the reliability of what they’re hearing.
The character itself evolved significantly during development. “The first draft of the show was so different, he was a very different person,” Conor reveals. “It was through interrogating why he would make certain choices that the character really emerged.” Conversations with others, including family, also shaped that process. “I’m one of four boys, we all had very different ideas about what it kind of was to be a man, that was interesting, because we all grew up in the same space.”
Research also highlighted what the show deliberately avoids. “This character wants to beat and impress other men,” Conor says. “There is no violence against women in this show.” However, they acknowledge the wider implications. “What surprised me is that those things can have an incredibly scary intersection the roots go way deeper than I imagined.”
For all its intensity, Conor hopes the play leaves room for reflection. “I’d like to hope the show reaches into something quite dark and comes out with something a little bit hopeful,” they say. “Not necessarily creating a roadmap but pointing in a direction.”
As for why audiences should take a chance on the show at the Fringe, Conor smiles at their own improvised pitch. “It’s a pacey one person comedy drama, a madcap dash through the odyssey of one man’s violent tirade,” they say. “Everyone that has encountered it so far has been surprised, no one’s expected the show to end where it does.”
Above all, there is a sense of excitement about bringing the work to Edinburgh. “It’s the company’s debut, my writing debut, everyone’s Fringe debut,” Conor says. “It might be small in budget, but it is incredibly high in ambition, scrappy, but hopefully engaging.”
Listings and ticket information can be found here
