We sat down with Conor, the writer and performer of Homo(sapien) and directed by Jen McGregor, a one-hander at Assembly Roxy -Snug Bar from 30th July to 24th August as part of the EdFringe 2025.
Hello Conor, thanks for chatting to us, could you tell us a little about your upcoming Fringe show Homo(sapien)?
Hi! Thanks so much for having me. Of course! Homo(sapien) is a one-man dark comedy show about growing up gay and Catholic in the West of Ireland. It follows Joey, a self-described ‘bad gay’, who ‘can’t get into RuPaul’s Drag Race no matter how hard he tries’ and has never had sex. His fear of death drives him to go on a misguided quest to ‘get his hole’ before it’s too late.
The play is an emotional rollercoaster, as Joey takes the audience on an hour long odyssey through the pubs and clubs of Galway. It’s a kaleidoscope of sexy hurlers, catholic guilt, childhood memories, glitter, poppers and flowery mesh tops.
It’s not a play for the faint of heart – it’s fast, it’s gritty, it’s up, it’s down and it promises to take you on a journey.
It’s my very first show as a writer and after working on it for years, I’m so proud to be finally bringing it to the Fringe!
Homo(sapien) started as a work-in-progress at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. What has it been like to develop the show into a larger piece?
First and foremost, it’s been a dream! The play initially stemmed from my desire to create my own work as an actor – which it has done! – and it has evolved into something so much more: it’s been creatively empowering, personally liberating, very healing and it’s discovered and nurtured a passion in me for writing that I didn’t know I had! It’s opened doors for other writing opportunities and that’s super exciting. I have written something that 17 year old me would have felt so normalised by, that 14 year old me would have never thought possible and that 8 year old me could only dream of.
And it’s also been very challenging! In 2022 I wrote 5 minutes of this script and then shelved it for several months, not knowing where to go with it next! A few months later, I decided to film a sketch of this 5 minutes for YouTube and I sent it to a few industry folk. Brian Merriman, the Artistic Director of the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival at the time, was one of those people. He offered me a 15 minute slot in the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in 2023, and so I developed the 5 minutes to 15! It went down a treat in Dublin and on the back of its success, I got my first ever bout of Creative Scotland funding to write the full hour.
The first block I encountered was that the 15 minute worked so well, but it wouldn’t work in a larger version, so the challenge was to take everything that worked in the short play – the pace, the heart, the style, the grand reveal within it, and weave it into a more complex, nuanced story that could hold more characters, themes and keep the audience engaged for an hour!
On top of this, a solo-show always presents a lot of questions to answer: who is this person talking to? How will this story be framed? How do I break free from ‘monologuing’ at the audience and make this show feel alive, present and active?
And that’s all before putting the actor hat on! I say this all from such a joyful place – I enjoyed this process so very much, I have grown so much as an artist developing this and I am tremendously excited to share it with the world!
This is your first time bringing a show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – how are you feeling? What are you most looking forward to?
I’m really excited! I’m lucky enough to be quite familiar with the Fringe as a performer, having acted in the last three Fringes, in other people’s plays. So although it is my very first time bringing my own show to the Fringe, I feel I’ve a relatively decent understanding of the landscape. In fact, taking my own show to the Fringe feels like the logical next step! So I’m feeling excited! I feel well-equipped and ready! That being said, I certainly won’t be complacent; the Fringe will always bring something unexpected and surprising, but I’m excited for it!
I think I’m most looking forward to sharing this story with more people. It has lived in my mind for so long, I am excited for it to meet with the wider community!
Of course, as an actor in other people’s work, I pour myself into whatever character I am playing. What is really cool about bringing my own show is that I can pour myself into every element, from the wiring, the acting, the experience itself, the design, all of it. So it feels like a full reflection of what I want to offer as an artist.
The show deals with a lot of important themes, from faith to identity and queerness. How has it been for you to explore these themes in the show?
It’s been personally cathartic and artistically challenging, if that makes sense! As someone who grew up with a lot of Catholic shame and difficulty accepting my own sexuality, in spite of a loving and supportive family, it was really important for me to explore this through the eyes of Joey, who experiences this on a more heightened level. There’s a generalised assumption from elder gays that the modern gay experience is easy, and yes they’ve absolutely paved a difficult path that made things easier for later generations, but there are still challenges. Also in a climate of decreasing tolerance for LGBTQ+ people, particularly the trans community, it feels more important than ever to explore these themes in a loving way.
It’s been artistically challenging because I have decided as a writer that I want to contribute to greater representation of the queer experience through a lens of joy that queer work historically has been deprived of. The challenge lies in the fact that the truth of some of the experience is difficulty, struggle and hardship. The challenge has been honouring those more difficult parts of the experience whilst also handling them with a lightness of touch, brevity and hopefulness, that I want my work to impart, without undermining the difficulties the experience can bring. I guess radical queer joy wouldn’t be a necessary thing without the stickier parts of the experience. I think Homo(sapien) reflects finding joy and liberation in spite of the struggles.
What are you hoping for audiences to take away from the show?
I think I penned a title for this play that has a lot to live up to! My intention is to tell a story that is very gay and also very human. So I want people to connect with it, no matter their demographic or orientation, and see parts of themselves in Joey’s story, whatever that might be.
Where can audiences see Homo(sapien) ?
Homo(sapien) is on for the full run of the Fringe, from the 30th July – 24th of August every day (excl. 12th & 19th) at 1.10pm at The Snug in Assembly Roxy
Finally – if you could describe Homo(sapien) in three words, what would they be?
Messy, horny, fun – what more could you want?