Fat White Family founding member’s debut play Removal Men lands in Hackney Wick

A still from the Removal Men trailer.

One of the founding members of the band Fat White Family will see his debut play performed at the Yard Theatre this month.

Removal Men tells the story of Mo, a detention officer at an immigration removal centre in Bishop Stortford, who falls in love with one of the detainees there.

Yard Theatre chief Jay Miller, who is directing the play, describes it as “an electrifying story of love, violence and power which reveals a nation brutalised and confused by systems of inequality.”

This state of the nation play, written and with original songs by M.J. Harding, takes aim at the subject of immigration. But rather than telling individual immigrants’ stories, it provides a different perspective by focusing on those whose job it is to detain them.

“It’s not that we don’t respect those other stories,” says Miller. “It’s just that those stories have been on the front pages of our newspapers for two or three years and nothing has changed.

“I guess I didn’t want to put something on stage which was just a repetition of what the newspapers are doing very well, which is to remind us of the tragedy.”

Miller explains that the show is called Removal Men because the characters have to remove a sense of who they are from what they do each day.

“One of the ways they do that is by making each other laugh and in doing so making the audience laugh,” he says.

“I suppose immigration removal centres are quite sinister but the play is sort of a tragi-comedy in a way. The characters need to be very playful so they can cope with their jobs.”

Mike Harding left the Fat White Family to concentrate on a career in theatre. The idea for Removal Men came when Miller saw Harding in a club perform a one-man version of the play.

“We’ve turned it into a bigger show with a plot and more characters,” he says.

“There’s quite a few songs all of which Mike has written with a collaborator Jonah Brody and they’re amazing songs and complement the plot really well.

“The great thing about working with a first time writer is that they don’t necessarily have a full awareness of the inner workings of what might make a good play.

“But in not knowing that they also ask good questions and offer new approaches. The conversation is different because it becomes about possibilities rather than probabilities.”

Removal Men
8 November – 10 December
The Yard Theatre
Unit 2A Queen’s Yard, White Post Lane, E9 5EN