Fry gave up his school career in 1932 to found the Tunbridge Wells Repertory Players, which he ran for three years, directing and starring in the English premiere of George Bernard Shaw’s A Village Wooing in 1934. As a curtain-raiser, he put on a revised version of a show he wrote when he was a schoolboy called The Peregrines. He also wrote the music for She Shall Have Music in 1935.