PRACTISING DRAMA FOR LIFE
Drama that prepares people for life after prison
Regeneration Theatre uses the power of theatre to change lives for the better. Our workshops help people in prison build the confidence, awareness and skills they need to face release.
How it works
We use Forum Theatre, developed by Augusto Boal as a “rehearsal for reality”. Participants turn their own experiences into scenes, such as a job interview where an employer asks about a past offence. The audience can step in, stop the action and try a different response. It creates space for self-expression, personal responsibility and seeing a situation through someone else’s eyes. Participants reported growing confidence, stronger teamwork and communication, greater ability to respond in the moment, and a sense of achievement and ownership.
Who leads it
Our workshops are led by Outreach Director Dominic McHale, who has spent 20 years running drama programmes in prisons, drug rehabilitation units and Young Offenders Institutions, Mark Lockyer, whose one-man show about his journey through a bipolar collapse, homelessness and prison has been acclaimed since 2006, and a number of Hugh experienced facilitators.
OUTCOMES
What participants told us
Everyone in the feedback group said they felt less anxious and more confident, and 60% said their anxiety had dropped dramatically. (Self-reported, from one group.)
“Anxiety dropped to zero once we actually started.”
“The course was brilliant. Can we do it again?”
What we’ve done in 2026
HMP Wayland: a second visit to his Category C prison - this time with a Forum Theatre “residency” from May to June 2026.
Discussions with prisoners, staff and management helped identify real-life situations that cause anxiety around release and resettlement. Building on our work there in 2025, we began a Forum Theatre pilot on 11 May 2026, continuing into early June.
HMP Erlestoke: a Second visit to HMP Erlstoke, again with a Forum theatre “residency” for a month from mid September. During this residency participants focused on improvising around situations that may occur after release, and developed a play. The residency culminated in a performance of this play play to a group of prison staff, and other invited guests.
HMP Hollesley Bay: Theatre and employability
At this Category D prison, an intensive week-long workshop in May was delivered with partners Second Stage. Approximately 16 participants who had completed its stage management course explored our one-man Hamlet, met the creative team and applied their technical skills through rehearsals and technical run-throughs.
The week ended with a performance for invited guests. Afterwards, one participant who had graduated from Second Stage’s training was given licence to leave prison to assist with the technical staging of Hamlet at the Mad About Shakespeare Festival in Aldeburgh.
Working with partners
We are working with the Centre for Social Justice and specialist offender charities to develop clear impact measures, and exploring with the Ministry of Justice how to roll the model out more widely.
PRACTISING DRAMA FOR LIFE
‘Prison is a space where people are put with the expectation they will change and yet every day that passes is the same as the one before. Institutionalisation means staff and prisoners feel how it has been is the only way it can be. Theatre challenges that. It takes risks because it puts people centre stage and says ‘You can do this.’
There is no better way of supporting change than by embodying it by doing something you felt you couldn’t do, wouldn’t have a chance to do and, with support, seeing it through. Achieving that removes the main obstacles to change: doubt and fear. This is worth a thousand self-help books on how to change/develop.
Being part of a performance, putting yourself out on stage allows you to show a different version of yourself and, as people respond to that different version, things change.’
Testimony from our commissioner at HMP Erlstoke
Trying, failing and sticking with it – our drama workshops work with an individual to unlock what is inside and release the self-discovery of what they are capable of. Regeneration Theatre drama workshops offer the possibility of a positive future. They are a bridge between the now and what could be. In short they engender HOPE.
Life on the wing in prison, in a homeless setting or living with mental health issues is difficult and lonely.
Any organised workshop outside of that isolation offers diversion, time with others, the learning of new skills.
All drama work in these settings offer something more – they offer participation in collective engagement, skills in drama techniques which can be translated to real life situations in work, family and negotiating situations, and encourage clearer self-presentation.
DOMINIC McHALE, Outreach Director
WHAT DOES CHANGING LIVES LOOK LIKE?
HOW DO YOU MEASURE IT? HOW CAN YOU USE THEATRE TO DO THIS?
We used theatre to help bring change into the mundane, allow exploration of making a mistake and finding the positive from it to build on. We used theatre to help prisoners understand what trusting others and working together towards a common goal can do. It brought fun and colour into an environment that is often oppressive. We gave our group an ability to explore sides of themselves they thought were long gone, or that they could never do. Taking a chance on believing in themselves and stepping in front of others to produce a piece based on a subject that a month ago they did not know. That is a positive step forward. And every step forward changes their lives.
One participant shared that they had always tried to live by the rule book, yet now — because of prison — they felt they had no real chance at a future. Thanks to the group, however, they will leave in October with a renewed sense of purpose and hope. That’s real change — change that theatre helped inspire in just four short weeks. A sustained programme, with peer mentors working alongside facilitators, could build on this impact and create truly transformative moments.
Testimony from our commissioner at HMP Wayland
But Regeneration Theatre drama workshops are different again…They
work with the participant to be an active co-creator, to create an embodiment of a bette life individually and in the collective ensemble of the group –
foster empathy and understandin of how we impact other and how other impact us. Vital for returning to engagement with the world of work family relations, housing issues, financial plans.
• employ humour throughout to encourag group understanding, committed attendance and engagement with the project, and thence with activity – and the world - generally
The result is the presentation of self-created piece of dramatic work, as a true theatre ensemble performed to invited audiences of peers and partners, using our source material – a highly regarded piece of professional touring theatre performed by a world clas actor. This creates a sense of achievement beyond any other learninh opportunities.
We are working with Strategic Housing and Community Employment specialists within the prison service to embed a real through line of support for participants, post release