In 0800 Cupid, Emer Dineen has created a ‘camp catalyst for reconnection’ in a lonely world

Emer Dineen arrives at Love Tempo, the bar on Thomas Street in Dublin, after another day of rehearsals for her new show, 0800 Cupid. “I’m covered in a sheen of stale sweat. It’s very physical, it’s very intense, but everyone in the room is giving 110 per cent,” she says about preparations for the production, which is set to premiere at Project Arts Centre this month as part of Dublin Theatre Festival.
“It’s just so bolstering. People are taking coffee breaks because they want to talk about thematic things, interpretations, and that makes me feel very bolstered about the material. Also, the creatives are beyond talented. It’s really exciting. There’s a real energy.”
Dineen has been on something of a roll: The Quare Fellow at the Abbey, Thisispopbaby’s Wake, Haus of Wig and Beyond the Pale. Wake featured Dineen as her drag-king character, Duncan Disorderly, a hilariously earnest and delightfully chaotic DJ, who also featured at this year’s Glastonbury and Mighty Hoopla music festivals in Britain, making his declaration of being a “major underground DJ celebrity” sound less knowingly deluded with every gig.
This latest Thisispopbaby production builds a new character, Cupid, who “grapples with love in a lonely capitalist paradigm, hungover, moulting and disorientated”. The show is described as genre-defying, a cross between a narrative album, a musical and a personal existential journey steeped in cabaret energy.
The director of 0800 Cupid is Phillip McMahon, who met Dineen in London while casting Bourgeois & Maurice’s show Insane Animals. “Immediately I was, like, there’s something very intriguing about this person,” says McMahon. “I cast her in Insane Animals and we went on a magical journey on that show. We rehearsed and performed it in February-March 2020, and the final performance was the final performance of any theatre show in the UK” as lockdown took hold.
They stayed in contact during the pandemic and talked about the Cupid character Dineen was developing. “I was so intrigued by the idea and all the skills she had available to her,” says McMahon. “She’s a celebrated dance-music vocalist, a writer, an actor, a cabaret star. In Thisispopbaby’s magpie way of going, ‘Yoink: you’ve got something to say, and you’re 100 per cent in our wheelhouse,’ I said, ‘Let’s make a show together.’”
Coming out of the pandemic, Dineen was thinking a lot about “social anxiety, anxiety about the world, about climate change, about being chronically online and inside for so long. I wanted to create this character. The incentive at the beginning was that there would be loads of us, loads of these cherub-type characters that would go out in clubs and informally get people talking again, and be a camp catalyst for reconnection … It grew outwards from there. It became rapidly clear that I was creating something that I needed.”
The narrative Dineen creates in 0800 Cupid is also at times deeply personal. “There are certain boundaries between myself and the material,” she says. “It’s kind of clear what complements the story and what bolsters the narrative and the message and what I’m trying to say. When I know it’s doing that, then I don’t mind. When everything is in service to the message, I can really feel myself get out of the way.
“The personal information doesn’t matter so long as the story and the message is clear. I’m happy to share those parts of myself … I’m always looking for honesty and authenticity in work. That can happen in a multitude of ways. We’re playing with the temperature of it, but I do think it’s going to be a pretty honest show.”
Elaine Mai, 0800 Cupid’s music producer, was brought on board to collaborate on “bringing it into the club”, she says of the production’s musical energy. (The show has a band that includes Michael McCarthy on drums and Osazee Aiguokhian on bass, along with Tom Beech as musical director.) An extraordinarily skilled producer of tracks, tones and sounds that have a dance-floor feel but also a deep emotional core, Mai thinks that Dineen has “really captured this moment in time – being in your 20s, 30s or 40s, trying to figure shit out, specifically if you’re an artist. She’s managed to bring through themes of everything life hits you with; it’s happy, joyous, sad, introspective.”
In this drive to connect, Dineen says her greatest fear is mass apathy. “I find apathy very scary. In exploring the themes of the show, I’ve been researching this meta-modern meaning crisis, the spiritual crisis, the loneliness epidemic.”
Dineen pauses as food arrives at the table. “I don’t know how you can expect me to continue talking about existentialism now there’s tacos on the table. My greatest fear is: Are these tacos getting cold?”
She resets herself. “In order to not spiral off into an existential meandering or dissociative state, we need to believe that the infrastructure we’re buying into is moral and kind. Or that there’s a viable alternative. All the information we get is that it’s not moral. I worry that young people will just completely tap out instead of feeling hopeful about the future.”
Gradually, other artists from the show arrive at the bar, to decompress after rehearsals. Dineen attempts to sum up what audiences will see. “People can expect a rollercoaster narrative album that sits excitingly within club culture and queer culture, with also a very true and very real, somewhat sobering narrative through it that rests upon a feeling of hope and the importance of staying present, and the importance of protecting each other and yourself.”
0800 Cupid is at Project Arts Centre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, from Saturday, September 28th, to Saturday, October 5th