Donnacadh O’Briain: Why Immersive Theatre Is the Next Evolution of Organisational Training

2025-12-19

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What happens when leadership training stops being something you sit through and becomes something you step inside?In this episode, theatre director and experience designer Donnacadh O’Briain shares the story of a bold leadership programme that replaced slides, frameworks, and role-play with a fully immersive live theatre experience. Set inside a 1930s dockyard, leaders became participants in an unfolding story forced to navigate complex conversations, power dynamics, trust, and decision-making in real t...

What happens when leadership training stops being something you sit through and becomes something you step inside?

In this episode, theatre director and experience designer Donnacadh O’Briain shares the story of a bold leadership programme that replaced slides, frameworks, and role-play with a fully immersive live theatre experience. Set inside a 1930s dockyard, leaders became participants in an unfolding story forced to navigate complex conversations, power dynamics, trust, and decision-making in real time.

Together, Steve and Donnacadh explore why theatre creates deeper learning, how immersion accelerates behavioural change, and what organisations can learn from rehearsal rooms about leadership, presence, and human connection.

Chapters
00:00 – From Theatre to Leadership Learning
07:10 – Why Traditional Leadership Training Falls Short
14:30 – Inside the Live Theatre Leadership Experiment
24:40 – Freezing Time: Learning Through Real Decisions
34:50 – The Impact on Leaders and Organisational Culture
44:10 – What Theatre Teaches Us About Leading Humans
51:00 – The Future of Experiential Leadership Development

Bio:
Donnacadh is an Olivier and Offie Award-winning Director, Experience Designer and Story Architect specialising in live theatre, immersive experiences and experiential learning. He is a cross-industry expert in story and narrative. His wide-ranging career has seen him working on everything from musicals, Shakespeare, West End comedies, and large-scale immersive LBE's, to consulting on story and branding and creating innovative learning projects for major companies in the US and Europe.

Recent clients have ranged from entertainment IP giants to Fortune 500 finance and tech companies and Hollywood production houses. He is a TEDx speaker, has given lectures and mentored at institutions such as Cambridge University & RADA, and spent a year as an Associate Fellow of Creativity at Warwick University.

Connect with Donnacadh
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnacadh-o-briain-35788837/

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