Matthew Bairstow, writer of 'Cupid Presents: Love Making for Beginners', tells us about the inspiration for his new comedy play.
Cupid Presents is a silly comedy about love and communication within a relationship and the importance of discussing issues that come up and learning to work on them together. In the play, Cupid has invited an audience to attend her first seminar on love which is taking place in the bedroom of an unsuspecting couple approaching their one year anniversary. But things start to go wrong when Cupid’s younger brother Dipuc turns up uninvited and starts to create havoc for Cupid and the young couple.
My initial inspiration for this play came from a simple idea for an anti-cupid kind of character, who upon first writing I named the ‘God of Divorce’. It was a very silly idea that I kept in a writing folder for a while, until I started studying on the Central School of Speech and Drama’s ‘Writing for Performance’ course. My friend encouraged me to write a short 20-minute play for a student play festival and, when I read her my list of play ideas, she very quickly said that this was the play to write.
I wrote the 20-minute version, and it was greatly appreciated by fellow students, many of whom encouraged me to extend it into a longer fringe style piece. A year later, I decided to do exactly that. The characters became much more evolved; the depth of the couple’s relationship was expanded upon, Dipuc (the anti-Cupid character) became much more layered and Cupid’s relationship with the audience was built upon, finally resulting in this fun, silly and somewhat heartwarming show.
Cupid is quite a neurotic character, desperate to spread love and share her knowledge with the audience. She takes the phrase “all you need is love” a little too literally and it often leads to her believing she can do no wrong. Dipuc is a counterforce to Cupid, wanting to balance out her brother’s overly romanticised view of the world, and happy to annoy her brother as much as possible along the way. She is cool, confident and yet somehow just as childish as Cupid.
Marcus and Felicity are the young couple unknowingly being displayed to the audience. They just want to enjoy the rest of their evening after a romantic night out, but they seem to have very different ideas on how the rest of the night should be spent.
I’m very excited to be back working with Cat Nicol (director) and Between the Bars but for the first time as a writer - I had previously acted in their productions of ‘After Life’ and ‘Wild Swimming’. Both were incredibly enjoyable shows to be a part of and I find it very strange to now be so often outside of the rehearsal room. Fortunately, I have put my faith in Cat and an exceptional cast to bring the words off my script and on to the stage. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the final production!
Cupid Presents: Love Making for Beginners
Wednesday 17 - Saturday 20 July 2024, 8PM
Corpus Playroom
Click here to book your tickets!