A letter from the writer of The Flea—James Fritz.

14 November

"I don’t suppose you’re looking for staff?"

It’s June 2013. I’m at the still-newish Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick. I’ve just bumped into an old boss who is now running the bar there. I’m desperate for work, so she gives me a shift for the following Saturday.

"So it’s an all-nighter, 11pm till 6am."

The night is wild, the sound system is loud, the bar rammed. When it’s over, I slink out into the morning light.

I’m 25 years old, and I’ve just started the most significant job of my life.

"So, we’re going to do the play, next year."

It’s November 2022. I’m 35 years old. I’m sitting opposite Jay Miller, founder and artistic director of The Yard. We’re in a shiny new cafe in Hackney Wick.

It’s been just under nine years since I stopped working at The Yard, and I’ve just been told I’m going to work there again. I’ve been writing the mammoth play that will eventually be called The Flea for a long time. It’s started to feel like one of those things that might never happen. Jay smiles, "we’re going to do it, with five actors."

Looking back at old emails this week, I was shocked to discover I only worked on the Yard bar for about a year. It feels like a lot longer in my memory.

God, it was fun. Chaotic, knackering, but so much fun. Long nights with hilarious people. The venue was still in its infancy, still discovering what it was and what type of work it would hold. There was a lawless, DIY quality to everything. A buzz in the air, a sense of the plane being built as it was flown. 

It feels like yesterday but it feels like forever ago.

I often think about how much our lives are shaped by the actions of people we don’t know. If Jay and his collaborators don’t decide to turn a disused warehouse into a theatre, then I don’t have some of my favourite theatrical memories.

I don’t play in the polystyrene snow at the end of The Pied Piper or feel the bass throbbing throughout Nina Segal’s Big Guns.

I don’t marvel at the steam rising from the pool in Josh’s Azouz’s Mikvah Project, or the moment the spaceship stops spinning in Vinay Patel’s Cherry Orchard.

I don’t sob through Alexander Zeldin’s Beyond Caring and gasp at the live chicks at the end of Rita Kalnejais’ This Beautiful Future.

I don’t sit in awe at the sheer epicness of Jay’s production of The Crucible, deciding there and then to make The Flea as big as I can because I realise that The Yard space can take it. 

But above all, if they don’t build that theatre then I don’t get a job pulling pints, which means the great turning point in my life never happens.

It’s Christmas 2013. The venue has been booked for a party and we’re short-staffed. The Theatre Coordinator kindly offers to stay behind to help out. Her name is Tam. We do the shift wearing Santa hats, and then when everyone’s gone home we pour ourselves a drink from behind the bar and one thing leads to another and and and—

We’ve been together ever since. Eleven years full of joy and romance that I feel so lucky to have shared. The bar job at The Yard is the most significant of my life. Whenever I’m back in the building I can’t help but be reminded of those days. I feel the ghosts of our younger selves, see our shadows on the wall every time I’m there.

And recently, I’ve been there a lot.

It's October 2023. The first night of The Flea and I’m absolutely wrecked with nerves.

I’ve always wanted to write something that feels like a great big night at the theatre. A play that knows it’s a play and embraces that fact, that’s full of big laughs and big emotions and huge turns of plot.

The Flea is as close as I’ve ever come, I think. It’s a play that’s loosely based on a famous Victorian scandal, that deliberately shifts form and tone from kitchen sink to film noir, cop drama to royal conspiracy thriller and back again. It’s my way of writing about the things I care about: about class and money and religion and sex and power and the way the paths of our lives are shaped by the actions of people we don’t know.

There is just so much show stuffed into that auditorium. The quick changes, the costumes (oh those costumes!), the design, the performances so bold and beautiful. Jay’s direction, taking each offer from my script and running with it further than I could ever have imagined. They have built something that plays to a hundred people but feels like it could play to a thousand.

It’s the biggest play I’ve ever written. It might be my favourite, too. I’m so glad I’m doing it here. It has felt, in the most joyfully cheesy way possible, like coming home.

It is Summer 2014. The night of my last bar shift. Goodbye to The Yard. When the last customer leaves, the shutters go down and, of course, we have a lock- in.

It feels like a chapter closing.

It’s October 2024. I’m 36 years old. And we’re doing The Flea for a second time and if anything I love it even more.

We are in the middle of tech week and my wife Tam - long since left The Yard - comes to meet me for lunch. 

She brings our baby, who I miss.

I hold my daughter in my arms and we take a picture together in front of the theatre, and suddenly I’m struck that she’s a whole human being that wouldn’t exist if The Yard had never been built. I wonder how many more there are out there. Loads probably.

Every theatre must have an army of them.

Next year The Yard will close its doors while the "temporary" space—now thirteen years old - is demolished, and a beautiful new theatre built in its place.

It’s so exciting. I’m thrilled for them. They’ve grown the place from its DIY beginnings into possibly the most exciting home for new plays - and new ways of making plays - in the country. Now they’ll have a venue that can match the scale and ambition of the work.

But of course, a part of me is sad to lose The Yard as I know it. It’s one of my favourite places.

To me, it’s a theatre, but it’s also a time machine. Somewhere I can imagine the future and dance with my past, all at once. It’s almost time for me to say goodbye to The Yard all over again, but I’m so glad I got to do The Flea before the rebuild.

We’ve got three weeks left of the run.

I’m going to be there as much as I can.