When theatre director and playwright Armando Punzo stepped inside the Volterra prison, one of Italy’s oldest jails, in 1988, he had one goal in mind: to prove that the healing, transformative power of art can be cultivated even in the most unlikely of places. 

Around forty successful productions later, and that theory seems to still be going strong. 

Punzo and his team created “Compagnia della Fortezza”, aka “Company of the Fortress,” a theatre company made up of Volterra inmates. As reported by The Washington Post, these inmates don’t simply act in the annual productions.  They participate in the overall creative process, working alongside local theatre professionals to develop the performances, which are open to the public (including young people, aged 16 , as of July 2026).

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And with each production, inmates are not only treated as human beings, but as artists. 

That distinction gets to the heart of Punzo original experiment, and why it has been so........

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