There’s something quietly radical about the way Yolanda Mercy makes theatre. Whether she’s writing, performing, or producing, her work pulses with honesty – sometimes funny, sometimes raw, always rooted in a desire to reflect lives that rarely get centre stage.

Her latest show, Failure Project, follows Ade – a woman whose life is unravelling just as her career takes off – and it’s already found a groundswell of support, from buzz at the Edinburgh Fringe to a three-week run at Soho Theatre. I caught up with Yolanda to talk about failure, resilience, representation, and why she’s making space for other voices, not just her own.

You’ve described your work as a love letter to those who rarely see themselves reflected. Whose lives do you think still go unseen today – and how do you decide whose stories to tell?

That comes from what audiences have told me – whether it’s Failure Project, Quarter Life Crisis, or BBW, my TV project about a plus-size Black woman from South London. People often say, ‘I’m so glad to see myself.’ That visibility – especially across those intersectionalities – really matters.

In Failure Project, I talk about Ade’s body. Her size and appearance shape how she moves through the world. I’ve had so many moments of entering a space and feeling unwelcome – and it’s the same for her. There’s a politic to inhabiting space in a body that doesn’t fit the norm.

But that’s not the whole story. There’s joy too – joy in figuring herself out, joy in being seen. I try to highlight those moments throughout the show.

And what drew you to create Failure Project in particular? Was there a personal moment that made you want to explore failure?

Yeah – I think wherever you grow up, success is always put on a pedestal. We’re told: here’s where you are, here’s what comes next. I was following that path, but when things didn’t go to plan, I felt like I’d failed.

And I didn’t even know what that meant – because failure was something I’d always tried to avoid.

I started talking to friends, and they said, ‘Yeah, I feel the same.’ And I thought, why haven’t I written about this?

That became the springboard for Failure Project – Ade’s life as a kind of project, and failure itself as a project. It’s not just about career failures. It’s about failing as a friend, as a daughter, in relationships. All of it.

Yes, the fear of failure can be paralysing.

Definitely. People will say someone’s a ‘failed actor’ or a ‘failed writer,’ but you never hear ‘failed doctor’ or ‘failed chef.’ And why is that?

Being a chef, for example – yes, there’s science to making food taste good, but there’s also creativity. So why is it that in creative careers, we’re so quick to tie failure to identity?

Do you think that’s something we internalise – that as creatives, we’re only as valuable as our most recent success?

Yeah, totally. It’s layered.

In Failure Project, Ade’s looking at her life and asking – how have I failed myself? And that can be the hardest thing to confront. There are things she should be proud of, but instead she’s thinking, ‘I should be doing more. I should already be here.’

Is that something you experience too – that pressure to always be further along?

Oh my gosh, I’m a human being – of course. I put so much pressure on myself, especially as an artist.

I was talking about this in a BBC interview recently – the amount of rejection you get in this industry, it’s constant. And when you sit down and really tally it up, it can be quite damaging.

I remember one week while I was developing Failure Project, I got four rejections – all arts funding, all different opportunities. Just constant no’s. And then I had one win: the show was listed as one of the top ten to see.

That was amazing, but in your mind, you have to really recalibrate. You have to remind yourself that something good happened, even when the week’s been full of rejection.

And for Failure Project, did those rejections feel different – like they were actually part of the story you were telling?

Yeah. It’s the first time I’ve written something that feels so topical – about wanting to be an artist, trying to make work, and what that really takes.

I didn’t get the funding I hoped for, so I felt like I was failing the very art I wanted to create. But I still made the show. Just differently. I had to be really resourceful.

When I took it to the Edinburgh Fringe, Waitrose actually sponsored the flowers in the show.

There’s a moment in the play (I won’t spoil it), but flowers are part of it. And I thought – what if we invited the audience to take a flower from the stage and give it to another artist? To say: ‘You deserve your flowers while you’re still alive.’

And I just thought – yes. That felt so full circle.

That’s such a fabulous idea – giving flowers like that as a gesture of recognition.

Yeah. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it in London – I hope so, but it depends.

You’ll need a sponsor – flowers aren’t cheap!

Waitrose were amazing. They really got it.

The Fringe is tough. People say the average show gets three audience members – and that’s in a venue that might seat 40 or 60. You’ve probably paid £3,000 just to rent the space, and you’re not going to make that back.

It takes a toll on your mental health. You start wondering, how can I keep sharing my story when I’m constantly worried about survival? That’s why I wanted to give flowers – to say, we see you, and we love you.

From what I’ve read about your work, it seems like you often blend humour with vulnerability. How do you decide when to go for the laugh, and when to let something really land emotionally?

I wish there were a formula, but for me it’s about following the character’s journey.

And culturally, we laugh – sometimes because we can’t cry, or don’t want to. That’s part of how I write. Whether it’s BBW, Quarter Life Crisis, On the Edge of Me, or Failure Project, the characters all carry that duality.

Some things in life are joyful, and we should enjoy them. But under the laughter, there’s often something else going on. That’s what being human is – we’re not always happy or always sad. There’s always something underneath.

So I let the work find its rhythm. I trust it to tell me.

That really resonates. Most of us are out here projecting ‘I’m fine’, while carrying something deeper underneath. It’s powerful that you explore that.

I think you’ve already touched on this a bit – but in Quarter Life Crisis you explored millennial pressure, and in On the Edge of Me it was post-uni anxiety. What are you, or Ade, grappling with now that feels most urgent?

Yeah – thank you for connecting those. It’s really about when your expectations don’t match your reality.

In Failure Project, we meet Ade just after a BAFTA nomination, and her project’s heading to the West End – these massive career moments. But the reality of what she dreamed isn’t matching how it feels.

So now she’s asking: how much do I compromise myself? I think a lot of people – not just artists – reach that point in their careers.

Do I compromise to get ahead? Or do I say no?

You’ve written for both TV and theatre. How do those forms challenge you differently – and how does your approach shift between them?

With theatre, you’re working in a closed space and a tight timeframe – maybe two hours max – so you have to choose which part of the story you want to tell.

With TV, it’s different. You might get six hours with a character over a series. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of time on stage.

But whether it’s theatre, TV, or film, the constant is character. That’s what drives me. That’s always where it starts.

What do you hope audiences take away from Failure Project?

That failure doesn’t define you.

You’re not a failure. You might feel like things haven’t worked out, or like you’ve failed at work, at friendships, as a daughter – like Ade does – but that doesn’t mean you are the failure.

Sometimes you need to step back and take care of yourself before you can come back into the world and say, okay – what do I need to do now?

I hope it starts conversations for people. That they walk away thinking: where in my life have I told myself I’m a failure… when actually, maybe I’m not? Maybe it’s just that things didn’t go the way I expected. And maybe that’s okay.

Just hearing you talk about it really moves me. That really resonates.

Did writing Failure Project shift the way you think about self-care or emotional recovery?

Yeah, definitely. Especially at the Fringe. I didn’t realise how close to the bone it would get for me.

Performing the show is a journey. There are things Ade goes through – being underfunded, feeling tokenised – that aren’t resolved in the world. And when audiences come up afterwards, wanting to talk, you can’t switch off.

It takes a toll. I was very public about how hard that felt – and Paines Plough, a theatre company based at Summerhall, saw that and reached out. They offered me therapy. And I said yes.

I’d had therapy while writing, but I didn’t realise I’d need it during the performances too. And I really did.

I’ve been hearing a lot more about drama therapists lately. Wabriya King’s name keeps coming up – it’s brilliant to see more artists working with drama therapy.

That’s who I saw, yeah. She’s brilliant.

I think what’s really interesting is that there are so many amazing artists now who write and perform their own work – and for a long time, there just wasn’t support in place for that. You’d go home after performing something deeply personal and just have to deal with it on your own.

But now, I think we’re more aware. We’ve all lived through a pandemic. The world has changed. It’s so important to have support structures like this.

I feel really lucky to have worked with her – and if I’d had funding, I absolutely would’ve brought in a therapist for the entire process.

As a Black British Nigerian woman in this industry, what changes have you actually felt in recent years – and what still hasn’t changed that needs to?

I think we’re starting to see more stories that reflect the fact we’re not a monolith. A show like Sleepova by Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini – who’s a good friend of mine – explores a very different Black British Nigerian experience. I want more of that.

But I also wish we had more opportunities to test and develop those stories. I want to see proper funding for artists to incubate ideas – to have time and space to fail, experiment, and grow. That’s how you build a sustainable career.

If you’re not already part of a company, or commissioned by one, you often have to go straight into producing a finished product. The stakes are so high, and the pressure can be intense.

And do you think that pressure falls more heavily on Black artists in particular?

I can only speak from my own experience, but yes. There needs to be more infrastructure for Black artists to explore and develop work safely – especially those whose stories don’t often get told.

I want to see more intersectional experiences. More Black queer stories. More work by neurodiverse Black artists. More Black artists who are wheelchair users. That kind of representation really matters.

And it shouldn’t just be a one-off. There needs to be long-term investment – not a ‘tick the box and move on’ approach.

Everyone has intersectionalities. And no one should feel like they have to disclose everything about themselves just to access space. We need a landscape where you can say, ‘This is the story I want to tell, this is who it’s about,’ and that’s enough. It doesn’t have to be a special programme – it should just be the programme.

That’s what I’m really passionate about right now – championing that shift.

You’ve done a lot to support others – mentoring, producing, leading collectives. What drives that side of your career?

Because I don’t want it to end with me. One of my friends said recently, ‘You know what you’re doing is leaving a legacy,’ and I thought – that’s great. I’m proud that Failure Project is published by Nick Hern Books and Quarter Life Crisis is published by Bloomsbury. But I don’t want it to just be about my work. I want other brilliant voices to be heard too.

Let me tell you a story. During the Edinburgh Fringe, I was performing Failure Project, and every day I walked half an hour to Waitrose to pick up the flowers they’d sponsored for the show. I had no team – it was just me.

One of the venue staff, Sanjay, helped me every day. He’s from Glasgow, and whenever he was working, he’d quietly take the flowers backstage for the next day’s show.

One day he said, ‘Come see my show – it’s at a bookshop up the road.’ So, I went. And I was blown away. I thought, this shouldn’t just exist in a bookshop. More people need to see this.

So I said to a friend, ‘Let’s produce it.’ I’d never produced someone else’s work before, but something in my gut said this had to happen. Sanjay is a brilliant queer artist who describes himself as neuro-spicy. He’d been making work for years, and no one had said, ‘Let’s back this.’

So with two friends, we got behind it. We helped him bring it to Soho Theatre as part of Soho Rising. And now he’s got a full run at the Fringe this year. He won the Assembly Award. And that makes me so happy.

He’s said himself that without that support, it wouldn’t have happened. Technically I’m not a producer – but I guess I am. I saw his show and knew it needed to be seen.

That’s brilliant. Do you let yourself own that? That you changed his life?

Yeah… yeah. He says it all the time. He posts about it constantly.

I mean, truly – do you get it?

I think I’m slowly starting to. You’ve got me emotional now!

I just keep thinking – how many brilliant artists are out there, constantly overlooked? It took someone from outside Scotland – me – doing my own show, walking into that bookshop, and saying, ‘He’s amazing.’ And everyone else already knew he was amazing. So why hadn’t anyone stepped up?

I did it off my own back. I gave my time for free. I helped write funding bids, I said, let’s make this happen. He’s got big, ambitious ideas – and I want to help make them real.

That, to me, is part of legacy. Not just making my own work, but helping other people make theirs too. That’s the difference I want to make in the world.

Hopefully you’ll be interviewing him one day.

I’d love that.

Me too. He’s brilliant.

Earlier you spoke about not always knowing why you’ve been put in a certain situation – whether it’s because of who you are, how you look, or how the industry sees you. Do you think tokenism is still a big issue in British theatre? What’s something the industry still gets wrong about diversity?

It’s the human factor, really. That’s what gets missed.

So often, people are reduced to the aspects of their identity that tick funding boxes. But I’m more than that. I have a story to tell – from a perspective you might not know.

It doesn’t always have to be a struggle story. I can tell a story about love, or heartbreak – something universal. And I’d love to see more of that. Not a ‘Black version’ of something – just a story.

There are so many brilliant stories out there. I might not have grown up in every part of the world, but I know what it’s like to feel like an outsider. I can find my way into a story, and so can anyone.

That’s what theatre should be about. Seeing people as people. Not just checkboxes.

What’s a question you wish people asked you more often?

‘How can we support you? What do you want to do next? Let’s make it happen.’

Because as you’ve heard, the work I make isn’t just about me. What I want to do next is support other artists. Sanjay was the first. I want there to be more.

I want to produce. I want to create a cabaret for plus-size performers – I’ve been dreaming about that for a while. Putting badarse, plus-size people on stage and letting them shine. That’s what I want to build.

So yeah – that’s what I think people should ask more: What do you want to do next, and how can we support you properly?

It’s been such a delight talking to you, Yolanda. I can’t wait to see your show.

Failure Project is at Soho Theatre, Dean Street from 27th May to 14th June.

Book your tickets at sohotheatre.com

Words by Nick Barr