Dukes Lancaster to welcome powerful dance theatre work on UK prison crisis
Lancashire audiences will have the chance to witness a dance theatre production built from real testimony and widely regarded as one of the most urgent pieces on the UK touring circuit.
Coming to the Dukes in Lancaster this week, the show tells the stories of three families whose sons died by suicide at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes.
Their words, gathered verbatim and spoken by actors, sit alongside choreography that transforms grief and anger into movement. Its makers describe it as a reckoning with how prisoners’ lives are valued.
The tour’s timing is deliberate. In April 2026, the Ministry of Justice formally acknowledged that conditions at HMP Woodhill continue to deteriorate, following years of warnings from coroners, inquest juries and the prison and probation ombudsman about staff shortages, poor training and inadequate support for at-risk prisoners. Woodhill, a Category B men’s prison that opened in 1992, now has one of the highest suicide rates of any jail in the country. In March, it received its second urgent notification in three years, prompting the government to introduce new safety measures.
Woodhill premiered at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, produced with Oxford’s The North Wall. It has since won the Sheila McKechnie Foundation’s Change Makers Award and the Charity Awards’ Arts, Culture and Heritage prize. This year’s return to the stage grows out of continued campaigning by theatre company LUNG and the Woodhill Families themselves, who say the crisis has never gone away.
Alongside the tour, LUNG and the families are calling for concrete action:
Prison governors to publicly commit to signing and acting on the Woodhill Commitments, placing suicide prevention first
Funding from Prisons Minister Catherine McKinnell MP to remove ligature points from every cell in the country
A place for families in safety decision-making, with Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, Chair of the Independent Advisory Council on Deaths in Custody, invited to bring them in
Recognition in Parliament, with Milton Keynes MP Emily Darlington asked to read aloud the names of the men who died at Woodhill
“Our boys needed help, not punishment. They were given a prison sentence that turned into a death sentence,” the Woodhill Families said. “There is a crisis unfolding in our prisons. We are proud to be taking our story across the country and launching this national campaign. We will not stop until our voices are heard.”
LUNG Co-Director Matt Woodhead highlighted the human cost behind the statistics: “For our families, it is heartbreaking to read that rates of self harm are still the highest in the adult male estate. The government’s response does not address this in any way. What action is being taken to keep these men in prison safe?”
Fellow Co-Director Helen Monks added: “Woodhill began as a tribute to those who have taken their lives at HMP Woodhill. Now, it has become a call for accountability. The urgent notification shows this crisis isn’t history — it’s happening now. We owe it to these families to keep the conversation alive.”
Founded in Barnsley in 2014, LUNG is known for turning overlooked, real-life stories into theatre. Its credits include Trojan Horse, the Fringe First and Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award-winning play about the false accusations against Birmingham school staff, now studied on the AQA curriculum, and The Children’s Inquiry, a Sky Arts Award-winning exploration of the UK care system. The company is currently Company in Residence at the National Theatre and works in partnership with the Lowry in Salford.
Woodhill is at Dukes Lancaster on 29th October. For more information, visit www.lungtheatre.co.uk.