Tap Out! (or I’ll hit you again) is a dark, fast-paced comedy about a man who starts picking fights with strangers – just to feel something. The writing debut from award-winning producer and director Conor Dye, this high energy debut explores loneliness, the nuances of modern-day masculinity, violence and the strange ways we try to connect in a disconnected world. Blending sharp humour with uncomfortable truths, the piece examines the pressure to constantly feel something – anything – in the digital age. We hold this dialogue with its creator, Conor Dye.
• What drew you to using street fighting as an extreme metaphor for modern loneliness and emotional numbness?
Funnily enough, it was an idea that was sparked by a random post that I saw on the internet. It was essentially a person confessing to going around and assaulting people. It might have been fictional, it might have been real, but either way I stored it at the back of my mind and went about my day. But that idea, that story, continued to grow in the background as I worked on other projects. I wondered what type of person would go out and hurt people for no reason at all? What would drive them? And what sort of void would they be trying to fill. I have this idea that ‘hurt people’ hurt other people, and from that this character started to emerge. Someone who is a little bit sad, a bit broken, and desperate to find anything to make him feel anything else.
• How does the character’s anonymity shape the audience’s understanding of masculinity and identity in the digital age?
Masculinity is a bit of a loaded term at the moment, right? But I wanted to write a show to explore that from the inside out. In this digital age, people can sometimes simultaneously exist between two states – seeking anonymity, so they can do or say whatever they like without consequences, and seeking acclaim, so that they can be recognise for all their feats. Both have ties – for men – into some core fundamentals of ‘masculine ideals’. To be strong, to be feared, and to be able to exert force through violence. For some men that can be all that they see, or all that they are shown to need. Now that’s not at all what masculinity is, and I hope that the character’s journey in this show explores that with an audience in a unique way. But by wearing a mask, our character gets to tread both sides of that line. He gets to do whatever he likes, but gets to avoid any long term consequences. Or so he thinks, anyway.
• In what ways did viral culture and online attention feeds influence the escalation of the protagonist’s behaviour?
Everyone exists online now. It’s a bit inescapable in a way. There’s the real you, and then there’s the digital puppet that you build over time. Piece by piece, photo by photo, post by post. And I’d argue that a lot of it exists for validation. To be recognised, to be seen. It’s that glimmer of
recognition that I think drives our character the minute that he receives it. It’s not something he’s chasing – not in the same way as an influencer (or a director trying to promote their own show) – but it’s like a jolt of energy. It tells him that he’s doing the right thing, or at least makes him believe that he is. Because if thousands of people are liking and commenting and sharing, then they can’t ALL be wrong, can they? And I don’t think that’s a particularly new idea either, you can open up TikTok to see people doing the most ridiculous of ‘challenges’, like putting salt and ice on their skin to watch it burn, all for the hope of being seen. Of being “followed”.
• How do you balance the dark comedy of the premise with the real consequences of violence and isolation?
Carefully (I hope). There’s something unfortunately very real and also very absurd about the show’s premise. Because the world is a bit absurd in a way. I think we’re all a little bit desensitised and numbed to the kind of horrific things we can see within a thumb’s scroll away from a food eating challenge or a clip of someone playing Fortnite. So I’m hoping that the intimacy of this show – wonderfully performed by Matt Ackermann – will help us to re-engage with the topic. And I will say that none of the violence shown in the story is ever funny. We make that very clear in both the text and the performance. Because there are real consequences for what this character does, and people get hurt. But it’s those moments in between, the little stitches of real life and relationships and levity that we find the humour – the juxtaposition of those two things is where we hope the show comes alive.
• What conversations around contemporary masculinity were you most keen to interrogate through Tap Out!?
The tether between ‘masculinity’ and ‘violence’ is something that I’m fascinated by. As a teenage boy who grew up with three brothers and studied martial arts, I can completely see the morbid pull of being the biggest, of being the strongest. Of never having needed to be told to “man up”. I think it ties back to this idea of the ‘hunter / gatherer’ – the notion that men once upon a time needed to hunt and to protect. It’s something that’s quite baked into the gender-essentialist outlook that we’re finding rearing it’s head with the rise of male red-pill influencers. If you’re not physically dominating then you’re not worth anything – or you’re worth less. But in the modern day, we don’t have blood feuds and duels anymore. We’re meant to have the law and the courts and the ‘social contract’ (although I don’t have enough time to comment on how effective all that is in reality!). We’re not meant to be fighting each other in the streets anymore. So what do we do with that role, that supposedly hard-wired instinct? How does that effect being a man?
• At what point does the show shift from absurdity into something more unsettlingly recognisable—and how did you approach that transition?
I don’t think that the main character of this show is likeable, but everyone whose encountered him so far (in reading the script, or hearing it aloud) has said that he’s compelling and they want to spend more time with him. He’s like a lot of us – he’s sad, and he’s broken; but he’s also funny
and intelligent, and he’s desperate to find something in his life that makes sense. I’d like to think that it’s these qualities in the characters that helps pull the show along; and it’s what became the centre of that transition. At what point can the character and that audience-relationship remain intact. When do they get ahead of him? And when is he changing the story to keep them protect? As he goes through this journey, as he spirals down, we he takes the audience down with him. They’re watching and laughing and then left to sit with him in the reality of his situation when it stops being funny.
Gilded Balloon (The Coorie) from Wednesday 5th – Monday 31st August at 18:20.
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/tap-out-or-i-ll-hit-you-again