Corporate Theatre Training
Supporting your people perform when it matters.
Your people already have the skills their jobs demand. What holds them back is rarely knowledge — it’s how they show up.
Whether they lead a room, handle a difficult conversation, or hold their nerve under pressure.
I run theatre-based training that works on exactly that. Not role-play. Not games. Real, practical work on how people communicate, collaborate and carry themselves — the things that decide whether good teams become great ones.
First, what this is not
Corporate training has earned its bad reputation. So let me be clear about what I don’t do.
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I don’t embarrass people. I support them.
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I don’t ask anyone to “act.” We investigate cause, effect and human behaviour — the real material of the workplace.
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I don’t run games to fill a day. Every exercise is built to produce something you can use: a shift, a decision, a stronger team.
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And I’m not a corporate trainer who read a book on theatre. I’m an arts leader who has run the room — General Manager and CEO roles, festival programmes of up to 350 events, teams of over 200, several departments pulling toward one goal.
Now that is settled........
Four decades in the room.
This isn’t theory borrowed from a seminar. It comes from doing the work — on stages, in festivals, and in organisations across three continents.
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Over 40 years in the arts, most of it in leadership.
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Festivals of up to 350 events and 1,000 staff — fast decisions, real stakes, real people.
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Thousands trained across India, Australia and Malaysia.
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Work spanning the arts, corporate, community, disability, aged-care and education sectors.
I’ve managed the projects, made the hard calls and handled the
human problems that come with them. That’s the experience I bring into your training room.
How I work.
Everyone in a room has something that makes them worth listening to. My job is to create the conditions where that shows up — where people express themselves freely, keep their own identity, and make room for everyone else’s.
I don’t believe in the workplace as a “family.” I do believe that if you want a team to deliver, you have to honour, back and value the people in it. That principle runs through everything I do.
Every organisation, every team, every room is its own community. So I don’t arrive with a fixed script. I work with the people in front of me, using experiential techniques drawn from theatre, performance and community cultural development — so the content lands in their actual working life, not a generic one.
The Method - Seven Questions
Every skilled actor prepares by answering seven questions — a framework from Konstantin Stanislavski, the father of modern acting. They’re a tool for clarity, motivation and presence under pressure. The same questions work just as well on a career, a team or a high-stakes meeting.
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Who am I? — your real position, and how you’re actually seen.
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Where am I? — reading the room, the organisation, the moment.
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What time is it? — where you are in your career, and what that asks of you.
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What do I want? — the objective. Get this clear and everything else follows.
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Why do I want it? — the drive underneath the goal, and the trust it builds.
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How will I get it? — tactics, presence, leadership style. If one approach fails, try another.
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What must I overcome? — the obstacle, inside and out. This is where the real work happens.
That last one matters most. In my training room, the most inspiring work is done wherever someone meets a challenge — in how they present, how they handle difference, how they think on their feet. It’s not magic. It’s the work.
The “soft” skills are the hard ones now.
Communication, collaboration, creativity, emotional intelligence — these used to be treated as nice-to-haves. They aren’t.
They’re now the clearest dividing line between people who lead well and people who stall, and between teams that hold together under pressure and teams that don’t.
Emotional intelligence, as Daniel Goleman describes it, is the ability to understand your own emotions and use them well — to build trust, think clearly and influence others. Self-awareness and self-management sit at its core. They’re also at the core of every actor’s craft, which is exactly why theatre-based work develops them so directly.
Where this comes from.
For anyone who wants the background, my approach draws on two traditions and a career.
Forum Theatre
Developed in the 1970s by Brazilian practitioner Augusto Boal, Forum Theatre was built to open dialogue and prompt real change through participation. It’s now used in more than 70 countries, from education to social work to corporate learning. I use its process-driven approach to build the competencies today’s workplace actually needs — empathy, collaboration, courage and creative thinking — by engaging people intellectually and emotionally, so learning becomes active rather than passive.
Community Cultural Development
CCD uses arts and culture to build connection, spark innovation and strengthen teams. I’ve applied it across disability services, aged care, education and corporate settings, and helped design a mentorship programme around it during my time as interim Chair of CAN WA. At its heart, it treats people as the experts in their own experience — which is exactly the footing good workplaces are built on.
Training and experience
I trained at the WA Academy of Performing Arts, one of the world’s most respected drama schools. Voice, body language, emotional intelligence, storytelling — the tools that help emerging leaders find confidence and clarity, and help established ones inspire teams and steer change. Four decades of running productions, festivals and organisations taught me how those tools hold up when the stakes are real.
A Final Word
In theatre and in life, it’s the challenges that hold our attention — and the challenges that reveal what people are made of. Naming the obstacle, building the technique to meet it, and rehearsing until it’s second nature: that’s how actors prepare, and it’s how I’ll prepare your people for the performances that matter to them.
