Our Team

SOPHIE BLUMBERG, ProduceR & programs Manager

Sophie Blumberg (she/her/hers) is a creative producer and dramaturg focusing on the development of new performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, and audience experience. Her producing work spans multiple sectors of the entertainment industry, including live performance, themed entertainment, and television. Her theatrical work has been seen with Octopus Theatricals, CalArts Center for New Performance, TeatrStudio (Warsaw, Poland), Edinburgh Fringe Festival, REDCAT, The Civilians, BAM Next Wave Festival, Goodman Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cherry Lane Theatre, the Orchard Project, Chicago Dramatists, and Cold Basement Dramatics, where she served as Artistic Director for two seasons.

Prior to joining the Producer Hub team, Sophie was the Associate Producer at the CalArts Center for New Performance, where she produced artist residencies, as well as world premiere productions. She is a member of CIPA’s Programs Committee, and an alumna of the Walt Disney Imagineering CalArts Educational Initiative, the Drama League, and Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Professional Training Company. In addition to her work with the Producer Hub, Sophie is an Associate Producer with Octopus Theatricals, and a Creative Executive with Littleton Road Productions.

Sophie holds an MFA in Creative Producing from the California Institute of the Arts.

michael francis, Producer & fiscal sponorship manager

Michael Francis (he/him/his) recently joined the Producer Hub team, is a team member with Octopus Theatricals, and has been a part of Fiasco Theater since 2010. He has played a critical role in Fiasco Theater's development of workshops, season planning, casting, and fundraising and audience development initiatives. Notable Fiasco works include Cymbeline (Theatre for a New Audience/Barrow Street/Broad Stage/Folger Theatre); Into the Woods (McCarter Theatre/Old Globe/Roundabout/Menier Chocolate Factory/NETworks); The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Folger Theatre/Theatre for a New Audience); The Imaginary Invalid (Old Globe); Measure for Measure (The New Victory/The Long Wharf); Tweflth Night (Classic Stage Company); Merrily We Roll Along (Roundabout). Michael spent a decade as a part of the staff of Leading Artists, Inc. a boutique talent agency in NYC.

Kelly letourneau, management associate

Kelly Letourneau is a New York City-based performer, playwright, and arts administrator. As an administrator, Kelly has worked with Primary Stages, Fiasco Theater, and The Shakespeare Academy @ Stratford. Behind the scenes, Kelly has experience as a stage manager, playwright’s assistant, and house manager. As a performer, Kelly has appeared off-Broadway, regionally and on tour. Theater credits include: A VALENTINE FOR SONDHEIM (Fiasco Theater), MIDSUMMER (Tiltyard), PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Kate Hamill (Playhouse on Park), and THE APPLE BOYS (HERE Arts Center). Kelly has trained with Fiasco Theater, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and she holds a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. www.kellyletourneau.com

Taneisha duggan, Producing consultant

taneisha is an artist working at the crossroads of performance and creative leadership. As a director her work lends itself to provocative interpretations of new works and classics. As a producer and arts administrator, she is propelled by the belief that the culture we present is the society we become. Select Directing credits: Jesus Hopped the "A" Train (University of Hartford) Blue Door (Juilliard) Actually (TheaterWorks Hartford), Hooded: or Being Black for Dummies (Juilliard), workshop readings (INK'D Festival at Playwright's Realm, newWORKS TheaterWorks Hartford). Select Producing credits: NYTimes Critic picks WALDEN by Amy Berryman and RUSSIAN TROLL FARM by Sarah Gancher; PROXIMITY by Harrison David Rivers (commission). She trained as an actor at SUNY - Purchase College in The School of Theater Arts and Film, and has appeared on regional stages in Connecticut and New York, including TheaterWorks Hartford, Long Wharf and LaMama. She is a 2016 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow, mama of two boys and believer in radical love-filled disruption.

RONEE PENOI, Co-founder

Ronee Penoi (Laguna Pueblo/Cherokee) (she/her/hers) has been with Octopus Theatricals since 2016. 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.

MARA ISAACS, co-Founder

Mara Isaacs is a Tony® and Grammy® Award winning producer and founder of Octopus Theatricals, an independent production company dedicated to fostering an expansive range of compelling theatrical works for local, national and international audiences. She has produced over 150 productions that have been seen on Broadway (Hadestown, The Inheritance, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Translations, Anna in the Tropics, Electra), off-Broadway (Hadestown, Fiasco Theater’s Into The Woods, The Brother/Sister Plays, Crowns, Miss Witherspoon, Valley Song), at theaters and performing arts centers around the US and the world (UK, Europe, Asia, Middle East, South America, South Africa, Canada). In 2019, she co-founded Sing It Again Records, winning a Grammy award with their first release, the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Hadestown.

Current projects include Social! A Social Distance Dance Club (created by David Byrne, Steven Hoggett and Christine Jones); Theatre For One; Dreaming Zenzile by Somi Kakoma; Iphigenia by Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding; Bill Irwin’s On Beckett. Mara is proud to produce the work of Homer’s Coat, Phantom Limb Company, Song of the Goat Theatre and more, and serves as Artistic Advisor to Fiasco Theater.

She was Producing Director at McCarter Theater Center in Princeton, NJ for 18 seasons and was an associate producer for Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. She is a founding member of CIPA (Creative and Independent Producer Alliance) and serves on the boards of the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund and TCG, where she is vice-chair. Mara teaches at Cal Arts and Princeton University.