Next stage approaches for Hackney Wick's Yard theatre

Tucked away in a corner of east London right next to the Olympic park, it has grown with the part of the capital it serves

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To get to the Yard theatre, emerge from Hackney Wick station on what we now call the Mildmay line, scratch your head, look right, venture forth and then turn left between scruffy uprights into what looks like - and is - an ex-industrial site, Queen's Yard, running up to the Lee Navigation Canal.

So far, so eerie or so promising, according to taste. Whichever, you soon enter an agglomeration of restaurants and bars with an ongoing meanwhile feel and, if you swing immediately right then right again, the former warehouse that has been the home of the theatre since its creation in 2011.

I was there on Tuesday night to see The Flea, a play written by James Fritz and directed by Yard founder Jay Miller. It dramatises the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889, when Fitzrovia hosted a house of assignation where aristocratic gay men encountered boy bits of rough. Nob patrons were rumoured to include Prince Albert Victor, grandson of Queen Victoria.

It was my second night out with The Flea, having attended its first run last autumn. Richard Brown reviewed it for On London at that time. He liked it. So did I. It is witty, insightful, sad, sparklingly performed and cleverly staged. Sartorially, it brought to mind that distant time when Derek Jarman made Jubilee and punk rock morphed into Antmusic. Move fast if you want to catch it at the Yard - its second run finishes on Saturday.

That ending nears as the Yard approaches a new chapter in its history. Earlier this year, the theatre secured a £700,000 Arts Council England (ACE) grant to refurbish and expand. Planning consent for the project had already been received and more news is expected soon.

The Yard's story is one of commitment, creativity and endeavour. It is also a strand of the legacy of London 2012. The theatre was put together by volunteers, with some materials salvaged from the future Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park's regeneration works and £10,000 from ACE. It was a temporary conversion that has lasted, underpinned by a 30-year lease. Its board of trustees is chaired by Simon Tate, founder of real estate firm Wetherby. Fellow members include Southbank Centre chief executive Elaine Bedell and Trust for London chief executive Manny Hothi.

The London Legacy Development Corporation, the mayoral body responsible for the evolution of the park and its environs - and the planning authority that consented the Yard's upgrade scheme - has been among its backers, along with various trusts and the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, within whose territory it lies. Another connection is that the Yard ran the short-term Hub 67 community centre, also in Hackney Wick, for the LLDC (it closed in 2022 to make way for redevelopment).

The LLDC will begin its own transformation from Sunday, when planning powers are formally handed back to the four boroughs who ceded them and as it continues its transition into a new kind of organisation for the next Games legacy phase. The theatre's process of change will encompass a more capacious, sustainable and accessible building, a new café-bar and space for young artists, designed by architects Takero Shimazaki. From improvised pop-up to established institution, the Yard has grown like the part of the capital it serves.

Photograph from the Yards’s Facebook page, taken in 2017.

PS: I don’t consider myself a theatre expert but I do admire DIY initiatives in the London arts world such as the Yard’s. See also my recent piece about Scrum theatre in Hammersmith, which, somewhat to my surprise, has been one of my most-read recent efforts.