Pirate Radio on Stage: Blaze FM Asks Who’s Allowed to Speak

Blaze FM Brings Pirate Radio to the Stage and Asks Who Gets to Speak and Who Gets Silenced.

There’s a particular kind of noise that comes from a pirate radio signal, that slightly distorted, slightly illegal crackle that meant somebody, somewhere, in a tower block flat with an aerial jammed out a window, was broadcasting something nobody official had approved. For a generation of Black British musicians, that crackle was the sound of an entire genre being born without permission. Blaze FM, touring nationally this September and October, takes that sound and turns it into a question the whole country still hasn’t answered honestly: who’s allowed to say what and who gets to decide.

“Grime culture is very much about doing it yourself, building community and being the voice for the community which you build and the community that you represent.”

Written by James Meteyard and grime MC Jammz, and directed by The Big House’s artistic director Maggie Norris, the play is set in a rundown Hackney council flat where a pirate station blasts uncensored new music and even more uncensored political opinion. The Blaze crew, led by father figure Hughbert, fight to keep the station on air against the kind of pressure that doesn’t always announce itself as censorship but functions exactly like it. Grime, Garage and Drill collide across eighty minutes, with the story unfolding against the backdrop of 7/7, the Windrush scandal and the more recent, ongoing policing of Drill music, three moments where the same question keeps resurfacing in different clothes.

“On the macrocosm, it’s about society as a whole, about freedom of speech, who is allowed to say what and how that gets policed depending on who says it.”

Jammz knows this territory from the inside, not as research but as lived history. Born and raised in Hackney, he built his name through the same pirate radio ecosystem the play dramatises, coming up on Rinse FM, Radar Radio, NTS and BBC 1Xtra in the 2010s, releasing the cult EP Hit Then Run and founding his own label and radio show, I Am Grime. He shared the cover of Observer Music’s British MCs special alongside Stormzy, Little Simz and Krept & Konan, all while working a day job nobody at the office knew he was quietly walking away from, until Logan Sama invited him to tour Australia and he finally handed in his notice for good. He’s said it himself: grime has always been about doing it yourself, building the community you represent and becoming its voice and Blaze FM takes that same instinct and widens the lens from one radio station to the whole of British society, asking how freedom of speech gets policed differently depending on whose mouth it’s coming out of.

“That crackle was the sound of an entire genre being born without permission.”

James Meteyard brings his own track record with difficult, urgent subject matter. His earlier play Electrolyte won the Mental Health Fringe Award and he previously wrote Redemption for The Big House in 2022, so this isn’t his first time working with a company built specifically around care experienced young people telling stories that come from genuine lived experience rather than research trips.

Blaze FM has been evolving for years before reaching this tour. It started life as No Man’s Island at The Big House in 2023, was reworked into a two act show at New Diorama under the title Between the Lines and was substantially rebuilt again for Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, where Maggie Norris won the Theatre Weekly Best Director Award. That kind of sustained development, three distinct versions over several years, tells you this isn’t a show that got rushed to capitalise on a moment. It’s been sharpened deliberately, each version getting closer to the story it needed to tell.

“Censorship and state overreach are heavy subjects, but the pirate radio scene the play is built on was never just about resistance. It was about joy too.”

The Big House’s own mission gives the piece extra weight. The company creates original work with care affected young people and their track record backs up the ambition, six Off West End Awards, the Centre for Social Justice Born to Be Award, two international LOVIE Awards and recognition as the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport’s 2025 Charity of the Year. This is a company that consistently turns lived experience into work critics call world class and Blaze FM sits squarely in that tradition.

The tour itself marks a first for The Big House, its debut national regional run, calling at Lowry in Salford from 17 to 19 September, Bristol Old Vic from 29 September to 3 October, and Belgrade Theatre in Coventry on 7 and 8 October. The List has already called it a superb show that handles sensitive topics well, allowing moments of joy, grief and resilience, which is precisely the balance a story like this needs. Censorship and state overreach are heavy subjects, but the pirate radio scene the play is built on was never just about resistance. It was about joy too, about community, about people making something vital out of very little because nobody was going to hand it to them.

That’s ultimately what Blaze FM seems built to capture, not a history lesson about a genre, but a live question about who still gets silenced today, told through the particular joy and defiance of the culture that has always refused to stay quiet.

Book your Tickets:

Lowry, Salford — 17–19 September, 8pm, £15 (£13 concessions), thelowry.com

Bristol Old Vic — 29 September–3 October, evenings 8pm (Thurs 6.30pm, Sat matinee 3pm), bristololdvic.org.uk

Belgrade Theatre, Coventry — 7–8 October, 7.45pm, from £12, belgrade.co.uk

Photo credit Kit McCarthy