Ryan O’Conner: From avoiding props to building a career in them
Wednesday 14 October 2026
Theatre & Performance Technology graduate Ryan O’Conner (2013) didn’t enjoy working on props at LIPA and actively tried to avoid the workshop.
But 13 years on from graduating, Ryan is an art director, prop supervisor and founder of ROC Props, with credits on high profile theatrical and immersive productions including Life of Pi, Doctor Who: Time Fracture and Peaky Blinders: The Rise.
As part of our 30th anniversary celebrations, we caught up with Ryan to talk career pivots, how a meeting with the UK’s leading prop supervisor changed everything and memories of LIPA.
When I started out props just wasn’t my bag at all. When I was at LIPA, I didn’t like making stuff and I hated being in the workshop. I wasn’t really interested.
Realising what you don't want to do can be just as important as finding what you love. I started to change my mind after working on Mary Poppins as an assistant stage manager (ASM). It was quite a props centric role and I really loved it. After that I worked on Dream Girls at the Savoy as an ASM where there were hardly any props. That’s when I knew props was where I wanted to go.
Meeting the right person at the right time can change everything. Everyone kept telling me that if I was interested in props I needed to speak to Lisa Buckley. Our paths finally crossed when I was working in Leicester and she was there with Les Misérables. I talked to her about what I was doing and what I wanted to do, and it seemed to really strike a chord with her. Lisa had been a stage manager, ASM and company manager and found a way into props.
Generosity in this industry can make a massive difference. Lisa took a job specifically so I could work with her. I only found this out later. She said to me “I’ve been offered something, but I need help, will you do it?” The whole thing was just so I could come in and work with her. I spent five years learning the trade by her side, sitting in high-level design meetings I had no right to be in. Watching how she navigated crisis and design challenges became part of my wheelhouse.
Timing and luck are strange things. I had two shows, Life of Pi and the immersive production Dr Who: Time Fracture, when COVID struck, Lisa and Mary Halliday (Lisa’s business partner) had around 20 - and they all disappeared overnight. Fortunately for me, my two shows picked up quite quickly after lockdown. Then when the bigger shows started back up Lisa and Mary asked me if could come back – and we did open some shows together – but at that point I was fairly well established and was being offered enough work set up ROC Props.
What I enjoy most is being able to see the process through from start to finish. There are prop supervisors who only like to do one aspect of the job, like the stage props or the set dressing in audience areas in immersive productions but I like to do both. I really like that and it means I’ve steered clear of doing more film and TV work because it’s much more departmentalised. I love getting to see the model, going to markets to source materials, dressing the set and then working through any teething problems in technical rehearsals and then seeing press night. Being the buyer, the set dresser, the painter – whatever the job requires – that's what I love.
At LIPA I found people who backed me. The most important moments to me were those that I shared with tutors, where I found people that believed in me and gave me that encouragement to back myself. Lecturers like Mark Doubleday were incredibly supportive – and I’m still in contact with him to this day.
