Our Team

Adam Hyndman is a Tony Award winning producer, as well as a performer, director, and activist who has worked extensively in the arts. Some notable credits include: ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, NBC’s THE SING OFF, CHILDREN OF EDEN in concert at The Kennedy Center, ALADDIN on Broadway, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND on Broadway, HADESTOWN on Broadway, THE INHERITANCE on Broadway, HERE LIES LOVE on Broadway and GYPSY on Broadway. 

He incubates projects as an independent producer as well as within the team at Octopus Theatrical. Adam is on the board of directors for both Pipeline Theatre Company and Producer Hub, and he continues his work of disruption, radical accessibility, and conciliation as a co-founder of The Industry Standard Group and its subsidiary; Second Act Theatrical Capital, the first accessible community investment and producing entity for commercial theater. Adam is also a creative and organizational consultant; having served as an equity strategy consultant with Groundwater Arts, and also as the project manager for RISE Theatre; an initiative of Maestra Music and The Miranda Family Fund, which creates an industry wide database to provide greater visibility and amplification for all professionals backstage, behind the scenes, and in support of theater making (Adam was named as one of Variety Magazine’s 10 Broadway Stars to watch for the 2023-24 season for his work with RISE Theatre). www.adamhyndman.com

Mara Isaacs is a Tony® and Grammy® Award-winning creative producer, recognized as a leader in developing and producing new plays, musicals and multi-disciplinary work across the globe. Selected highlights: Gypsy with Audra McDonald (Upcoming Broadway); Hadestown (Broadway, West End, North American Tour–Best Musical Tony and Grammy); Patrick Page’s All the Devils Are Here (off-Broadway); Bhangra Nation (Birmingham Rep 2024); Gabriel Byrne Walking With Ghosts (Broadway); (…Iphigenia) a new opera by Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding (premiere and US tour); Theatre for One (US, Ireland, Kenya); Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Broadway, Tony Award Best Play). Upcoming: Goddess; Dreaming Zenzile; I Feel Myself to be Part of Something (documentary film series). Mara generates opportunity through the organizations and programs she creates: Octopus Theatricals, to produce an expansive body of work—from experimental to commercial; Project Springboard, a program of the Jerome Robbins Foundation, to encourage the development of dance-driven musicals; Producer Hub, supporting producers and artists in the independent sector; Sing It Again Records, an independent record label. Previously: Producing Director at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ and as Associate Producer at the Mark Taper Forum/Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. Board service:  Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, Broadway League Board of Governors and the American Theatre Wing Advisory Board.

Liz Engelman is a dramaturg and the Founder and Executive Director of Tofte Lake Center at Norm's Fish Camp. She is currently splitting her time between Ely, MN, and her home in Minneapolis, MN. Most recently she taught in the Theatre and Dance Department at the University of Texas- Austin. Prior to that, Liz lived on Whidbey Island where she was the Alumnae Relations Coordinator of Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers.

Liz has served as the Resident Dramaturg at Mixed Blood Theatre, as the Literary Director of the McCarter Theatre, the Director of New Play Development at ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington, Literary Manager/Dramaturg at Seattle's Intiman Theatre, and as Assistant Literary Manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has worked on the development of new plays at The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, ASK Theatre Projects, New York Theatre Workshop, the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, South Coast Rep, Denver Center, and Florida Stage. She has directed new plays at The Illusion Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and Carleton College.

She studied dramaturgy and new play development at Brown and Columbia universities, where she received her BA and MFA in theatre and dramaturgy, respectively. Liz is the co-editor with Michael Bigelow Dixon of several collections of plays, a book on playwriting exercises, and of two volumes of monologues with Tori Haring-Smith.

Liz has served as President, Board Chair and is a current board member of LMDA, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She just ended her terms as a Board Member of the National Theatre Conference (NTC) and serves on the Board of the National New Play Network (NNPN).

Ronee Penoi (Laguna Pueblo/Cherokee) (she/her/hers) was with Octopus Theatricals from 2016 - 2021, and now serves as Director of Artistic Programming at ArtsEmerson, Boston’s leader presenter of contemporary world theater. She is a two-time ISPA (International Society for Performing Arts) Global Fellow, and has been an APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) Leadership Fellow and TCG (Theatre Communications Group) Rising Leader of Color. Ronee is a composer at work on two new musicals with collaborator Annalisa Dias under the banner of FLORA MUSICALS, and is a co-founder of the Groundwater Arts Collective dedicated to climate justice in the arts (recipient of a SPACE at Ryder Farm Residency Grant). Groundwater Arts’ work includes movement building/organizing around a Green New Theatre (GNT), bespoke consulting in decolonization and anti-racism, and new creative theatrical projects. Ronee is also a Founding Member of The Industry Standard Group (TISG), a multimedia commercial investment and producing organization with an intentional focus on promoting work reflecting diversity, increasing the presence of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) investors and producers in the commercial producing field and expanding the access and opportunities granted to BIPOC communities within the industry.

Ronee is a proud NEFA (New England Foundation for the Arts) National Theater Project Advisor, serves on Western Arts Alliance Committees (Indigenous and Conference Steering Committees) and leads the Creative and Independent Producer Alliance (CIPA) Programs Committee. She is also on the Advisory Board of the Global First Nations Performance Network. Ronee is a two-time recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Individual Artist Fellowship for her musical composing work. Previously, Ronee was NNPN Producer-in-Residence at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Senior Producing Fellow and Directing Fellow at Arena Stage, and toured nationally with Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy. She spent three years with the Consensus Building Institute, a non-profit specializing in facilitation and mediation services. Her current anti-racism practice builds upon a decolonization framework and embraces systems change as a key component of that work. She graduated with honors from Princeton University with a degree in Music with certificates in Vocal Performance and Theatre & Dance. She has been invited to guest lecture on producing at Princeton, Howard University, and for American University’s graduate Arts Administration program.

Sophie Blumberg (she/her) is a creative producer and dramaturg whose work spans multiple sectors of the entertainment industry, including live performance, themed entertainment, and television.

In television, Sophie works as the Director of Development for Littleton Road Productions, where she has produced acclaimed series including Dr. Death (Peacock), The Girl From Plainville (Hulu) and the Critic’s Choice Nominated Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy (Peacock).

Sophie’s work as a theatrical producer and developer of new work has been seen with Octopus Theatricals, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Tribeca Festival, the Orchard Project, CalArts Center for New Performance, TeatrStudio (Warsaw, Poland), Edinburgh Fringe Festiva, REDCAT, The Civilians, BAM Next Wave Festival, Goodman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cherry Lane Theatre, The Moving Company, Pig Iron, The Hypocrites, Victory Gardens Theatre, and Chicago Dramatists.

Sophie is an alumna of the Walt Disney Imagineering CalArts Educational Initiative and the Directing Internship at Actors Theatre of Louisville, as well as numerous other fellowships and residencies. She is a Co-Planner for the LMDA 2026 Conference, and, in 2020, co-designed CIPA’s Rising Producer Fellowship. Sophie holds an MFA in Creative Producing from the California Institute of the Arts.