Matt Woodhead brings Woodhill to the Edinburgh Fringe 2026, a powerful verbatim theatre piece created with families affected by the UK prison system. As writer and director, they continue LUNG’s commitment to amplifying unheard voices.
Blending testimony with movement and choreography, Woodhill shines a light on systemic failures and the human cost behind them. The production offers a thought-provoking and emotionally charged theatrical experience.
Woodhill runs at ZOO Southside from 7 – 30 August 2026 (not 10, 17 & 24). Tickets are available here.
You’re the writer and director of Woodhill at ZOO Southside. What can you tell us about the show?
Woodhill is about three families who lost their relatives to suicide at HMP Woodhill, and their fight to find out how and why.
We built the show entirely from their own words, verbatim testimony spoken by actors, woven together with choreography that lets us feel what language alone can’t reach.
It started as a way of honouring the men who died there. It’s become something bigger: a national campaign for change.
Choreographed by the incredible Alexzandra Sarmiento (former dance captain of Hamilton), this play uses movement to explore the crisis facing our prison system and the families whose lives it has turned upside down.
Woodhill is built from verbatim testimonies from families affected by the prison system. How did you approach turning these real stories into a piece of theatre?
We spent a long time listening and sitting with the families, letting them talk in their own time, on their own terms.
Every line in the play is drawn from interviews we have conducted.
The number of men who have taken their lives at HMP Woodhill is staggering. What is not always spoken about is the impact this has on the families and the other loved ones left behind.
Together with the families, we have shaped a script that examines this loss, but also acts as a space to remember their boys, Stephen, Kevin and Chris.
The production combines verbatim text with choreography. What does movement bring to the storytelling in this piece?
There’s a point where words run out and where grief, bureaucracy and the sheer repetition of institutional failure can’t be spoken anymore, only felt in the body.
That’s where the choreography takes over.
Movement lets us show what it’s like to be contained, controlled and failed by a system, things the families described to us but couldn’t always find words for.
Alexzandra’s choreography finds a new way to hold time differently on stage. What she’s built is relentless.
The play is like holding your breath for 90 minutes. You feel like you can only exhale when the lights go down.
The show addresses urgent and ongoing issues within the UK prison system. How do you balance creating a compelling theatrical experience with campaigning for change?
We don’t see those as being in tension. It’s the honesty of the testimony that makes the theatre compelling in the first place.
The families have trusted us with their incredible stories and we have a duty to tell them in the most compelling way we can.
Like any other night at the theatre, the craft matters.
Alongside the play, we have launched a national campaign to call for prison reform.
We are asking all audiences who attend our production to sign up to our Woodhill Commitments, to lobby governors and policymakers to take tangible steps to prevent future deaths.
No other family member should have to get that knock at the door. We do believe that change is possible.
Woodhill premiered to critical acclaim and is returning in response to continued developments. How has the piece evolved since its original run?
The bones of the show haven’t changed. The families’ testimony is still at the heart of it.
But the world around it has moved, and so has the piece.
Recently, HMP Woodhill received its second urgent notification in three years. This means, by the government’s own admission, the prison is failing.
It is devastating to be bringing the play back three years later and finding that nothing has changed.
It’s the same story, but the stakes feel higher because the crisis it describes hasn’t stopped.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see Woodhill?
Come and listen to these families. That’s really it.
You’ll leave moved, and probably angry, and hopefully asking the same question these three families have never stopped asking: how, and why did we allow this to happen?
