Woodhill at Lowry

Three men at HMP Woodhill are dead. Their families want to know why. In Woodhill, multi-award-winning theatre company LUNG turns that search for answers into a powerful piece of documentary theatre and dance, coming to Lowry this October as part of its Autumn Contemporary Season.

Written and directed by Matt Woodhead, the production tells the stories of Kevin Scarlett, Stephen Farrar and Chris Carpenter, three men who died at Woodhill prison between 2013 and 2018. Built from interviews with their families and others connected to the prison, their words are placed at the heart of the performance as grief, memory and an ongoing fight for justice are given physical form through movement, music and verbatim testimony.

For those unfamiliar with LUNG, the company has built a reputation for taking real testimony and turning it into urgent, campaigning theatre. Founded in Barnsley and now a company in residence at the National Theatre and a partner company of Lowry, their verbatim productions have travelled everywhere from theatres and schools to the Houses of Parliament. The aim is simple but powerful – to make hidden voices heard and use theatre as a way to ask difficult questions.

In Woodhill, that documentary approach is pushed further through choreography by Alexzandra Sarmiento and an intense soundscape, creating something that sits somewhere between theatre, dance and testimony. The result has been widely acclaimed, with The Guardian describing it as “campaigning theatre…reimagined with astonishing force” in a five-star review.

But behind the theatrical form are real families and real questions about what happened inside HMP Woodhill. Unflinching, deeply human and built from the words of those who have lived through it, Woodhill looks set to be one of the most powerful pieces in Lowry’s contemporary season – using theatre not simply to tell a story, but to demand that we listen.