Mara Isaacs

Mara Isaacs is the founder and director of Octopus Theatricals LLC, a company dedicated to producing and consulting in the performing arts. With over 20 years of producing experience at flagship theaters in the United States, she is recognized as a field leader in new play and new musical development and production as well as nonprofit organizational leadership. Isaacs began her professional career at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, where she produced new play development programs and productions from 1990–95. In 1995, she joined the McCarter Theatre Center staff, first as resident producer and then as producing director. For 18 seasons, she produced McCarter's theater series and play development programs including numerous commissions and productions of new plays and musicals and transfers to Broadway and off-Broadway, to theaters around the country and internationally. She teaches courses in creative producing, international theater, and musical theater development for Princeton University, and has twice been selected as a mentor with the TCG New Generations Program. Isaacs has served the Center as a theater panel chair in 2010 and 2011, as well as a theater panelist in 2009 and an LOI panelist in 2013. Most recently, she was a 2014 Pew Fellowships panelist.