0800 CUPID first graced Irish stages in 2024, and was deemed a “five-star phenomenon” by GCN. Two years on, it returns for a national tour across June and July, starting in Project Arts Centre before travelling to Cork, Galway, Clare, Sligo and Tralee. A project from theatre juggernauts THISISPOPBABY and cabaret star Emer Dineen, the show is a genre-defying, queer, countercultural opus that fizzes between performance and reality. Based on the performer’s true story of navigating loss, crises and connections, it is a musical march into and back from the existential brink.

In the middle of their run at the Project Arts Centre, Emer Dineen took time out of her busy schedule to chat to GCN about the production.

Born in Cork but raised in London, Emer clings strongly to her Irish roots. She says she’s “like f*cking Lady Gaga, who says ‘I’m Italian-American, I’m Italian-American’, but I’m like, ‘I’m Irish, I’m Irish’… I get very confused and conflicted when I speak to Irish people because, like, I actually just need you to know,” she joked.

THISISPOPBABY’s Philly McMahon, the director of 0800 CUPID, was particularly interested in the artist’s “lore”, which he got to know through their time working together on the musical Insane Animals.

“He’s very interested in diaspora stories and narratives, and I guess my parents’ one is quite unique,” Emer explained.

“My dad left school at 14 to provide for his nine younger siblings. He was from Blackpool in North Cork, and he always wanted to move to London to make it as an actor.”

After years of working various jobs, Emer’s father, Peter, made the big move to London in his 20s. He started off in commercial art, making signs and the like, before working on building sites, all the while paying for acting classes at night.

“Eventually, he worked all his way to the stage of the National Theatre, and then he started working full-time as an artist in London,” Emer shared.

“It’s just such a kind of hero’s journey. He really worked very hard and made it work.”

On the other hand, her mother is a storyteller of Celtic folklore.

As Philly McMahon and Emer Dineen continued to work together (she was also cast in THISISPOPBABY’s WAKE as DJ Duncan Disorderly), the pair would regularly chat about her ever-evolving story.

“I just started colloquially telling Philly some of the mad things that were happening in my life, and he, with the keen dramaturgical eye of a theatre maker in mind, was like, ‘Well, this could be interesting’.”

Some of the “mad things” in question included moving into a flat that had up to 70,000 bees living in the kitchen wall, and accidentally eating a whole bar of magic mushroom chocolate, among others. Like all of life’s more bizarre challenges, they naturally became “fantastic pub stories”, but Emer thought, “Do you know what? Let me just take this to the max. Pub stories on steroids”.

Around the same time, she won the Jane Anne Rothwell Award attached to Cork Midsummer Festival, which she used to develop a new drag character, Cupid, whose focus was to bring love and connection to people in a post-pandemic world. She found that there was a “weird poeticism to the duality” of this character and these life events happening in tandem, and combined them to create an 80-minute raucous extravaganza.

Enter 0800 CUPID. Set against the pulse of London’s club scene, the show takes audiences through this surreal chapter in Dineen’s life, including her drag career as the crumbling Cupid, a Tourette’s diagnosis, a nasty breakup, and the stories mentioned above.

But at the heart of the show is Emer Dineen’s journey of becoming a carer for her dad, who was diagnosed with dementia.

“I think I learned a lot from that period of my life,” Emer shared. “And I wanted to crystallise the things that I learned from that time and what was important.”

She continued: “What was amazing was, being a young person in this day and age, we have all these channels or all these metrics in which to try and quantify or define and understand who we are outside of ourselves…

“Then being faced with the responsibility of caring for someone who was losing their sense of identity, but also doing it so graciously, understanding that all we have together is the present moment, and all we have together is each other as we are and where we are. Realising that and how important that had been to me, and how much perspective that brought to my life, I was like, ‘I think it’s worth trying to crystallise that into a story that might help other people’.”

When the show debuted in 2024, Emer was still caring for her dad. Peter Dineen sadly passed away earlier this summer, with the production continuing on in his memory. Peter’s career started at The Everyman theatre, where 0800 CUPID will make its Cork debut in June.

Reflecting on how the production has evolved over the last two years alongside changes in her life, Emer shared, “There’s a lot that’s happened in the time between that’s made me a stronger person… I’m able to understand the story strangely more than I actually could last year, or however many years ago.

“I’m able to see it and understand it, and the changes we’ve made have made everything feel deeper and more cohesive and richer. We’ve made all of these choreographic, costume advancements, and the whole thing feels like it’s really benefited from time to breathe.”

She added, “There’s that element of rising to meet this show in who we are now and in this new context with different inflexions, and it just feels stronger, like there’s more levity to it and there’s more dynamics to it, and it just strangely feels easier than last time.”

While navigating some difficult themes, 0800 CUPID remains an appropriately flamboyant piece of queer theatre, injecting humour one minute and tugging at the heartstrings the next. In many ways, it transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary and the personal into the universal, highlighting the theatrical qualities of everyday life.

“It’s a story about loss and hope. We can come together and laugh together and have a dance together and maybe cry together, and everything’s going to be great,” the artist concluded.

Don’t miss out on seeing Emer Dineen in 0800 CUPID across Ireland this summer. For more information on dates, locations and tickets, click here.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by THISISPOPBABY (@thisispopbaby)

Did you know that this Pride month, you can support GCN by donating €1 when you shop online with PayPal? Simply select GCN at the checkout or add us as your favourite charity* at this link to support Ireland’s free LGBTQ+ media.

*GCN is a trading name of National LGBT Federation CLG, a registered charity – Charity Number: 20034580.