About Us

Our team

Daniel Blinkoff

Co-Founder
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Daniel is the co-founder of Outside In Theatre. He received his MFA in Acting from the Yale School of Drama. He has performed in over 200 plays in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles performing at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Fountain Theatre, Antaeus Theatre Company, and Center Theatre Group amongst others.
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Jessica Hanna

Producing Artistic Director
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Jessica is a Los Angeles based Director & Producer. Her focus has been on new work development. She has directed all over Los Angeles at Circle X, Celebration Theatre, Bootleg Theater, Inkwell Theatre among many.
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Paul Hungerford

Associate Artistic Director
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Paul is a faculty member at the USC School of Dramatic Arts. An actor, improviser and director, Hungerford studied acting and film making at Emerson College in Boston. He continued his studies at the British American Dramatic Academy’s Summer in Oxford, England, playing Oliver in As You Like It and Claudio in Measure for Measure.
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Matthew Pitner

General Manager | Improv Director | Creative Producer
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Matthew is a Los Angeles based actor, improvisor, director, and producer. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre Arts with an emphasis on acting and directing. Since 2006 he has been the Artistic Director of The Bearded Company, an improvisation company that focuses on the development of story-focused improvised plays.
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Arlo Sanders

Technical Director
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Arlo is a comedian, actor, improviser, director, musician, and technician. He spent his childhood in Long Beach, California, and moved to Seattle, Washington when he was eleven years old. In Seattle, he began his journey as a performer at the age of 18 by working as a professional stand-up comedian.
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Maisha Sebastiany

Managing Director
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Maisha is a multi-hyphenate artist and seasoned professional in the performing arts, having contributed to various theater and arts organizations. Her experience includes serving as the Entrepreneurial Arts Associate Program Manager at The National Black Theater, General Manager at Ujima Theater Company, and Assistant to the Artistic Director at Studio Arena Theater, a LORT B regional theater.
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Her leadership roles have encompassed operations, programming, and community engagement with notable institutions such as Shea’s Performing Arts Center, AFIFEST, African American Women in Cinema, and the Tribeca Film Festival.

Her creative journey spans multiple roles, including actor, writer, producer, and director, with a career encompassing commercials, stage productions, and film. Maisha commenced her artistic career as a company member with Ujima Theater Company and has performed with theaters across the United States, including the Irish Classical Theatre Company, Alleyway Theatre, New Worlds Theater, Harlem Stage, Theater for the New City, New Federal Theatre, and The National Black Theater.

Maisha’s award-winning writing and directing work has been showcased at venues such as The Brooklyn Playwrights Collective, Howard University’s Summer Theater Series, and Long Beach Playhouse, as well as at several festivals, including The Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, The Oscar Micheaux Film Festival, The San Francisco Black Film Festival, Ocktober Film Festival, London International Filmmakers Festival, and Paris International Film Festival.

With extensive experience in nonprofit leadership development, Maisha has served as a teaching artist throughout New York City for many years. Her work includes curriculum and program design focused on diversity education, leadership training, and arts in education at both collegiate and high school levels. She has collaborated with universities and school districts nationwide, culminating in her role as the Director of New York City’s Mayor’s Youth Leadership Council and the New York City Youth Council through the Coro New York Leadership Center. In 2021, Maisha was recognized as an Arts for L.A. Innovator for her impactful work with the Urban Artivist Academy, which fosters cultural sensitivity among young actors and writers dedicated to using film and television as vehicles for social justice.

In 2019, she founded Sparrow and Finch Films, a film and theater company aimed at creating and curating projects that awaken the collective social consciousness of America. The company’s mission is to produce “art that elevates the conversation,” utilizing powerful performances as a form of activism to provoke thought, dialogue, and ultimately, action on issues affecting our collective well-being. Within its first two years, Maisha successfully guided the company’s initial projects to be selected by over 13 film festivals, earning multiple awards for Best Actress and Best Emancipatory Film, along with nominations for Best Short and Outstanding Performance. She also secured distribution through ASPIRE TV, reaching more than 30 million homes, in addition to streaming agreements with platforms such as Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Roku, and KweliTV.

Furthermore, Maisha has leveraged her experience as a facilitator and trainer to establish MAS Diversity Consultancy. In this capacity, she creates spaces that employ theatrical techniques and leadership development principles, enabling individuals to engage in authentic self-reflection and cultivate awareness and empathy for diverse perspectives while addressing challenging issues such as racial and gender inequality. Maisha is a proud alumnus of Morgan State University and the Metropolitan College of New York, holding a B.A. in Communications: Television Production/Theatre and an M.B.A. with a specialization in Media Management. She is a proud member of both SAG-AFTRA and AEA and is excited to join the team at Outside In Theater.

Tamlyn Tomita

Co-Founder
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Tamlyn is co-founder of Outside In Theatre. She is perhaps best known for her role in “The Karate Kid, Part 2” which is enjoying its renaissance due to the popularity of “Cobra Kai” on NetFlix. Other projects she is known for are the films: “The Joy Luck Club”; “The Day After Tomorrow”; “Come See the Paradise”
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Our Founder's Story

My wife, Tamlyn Tomita, and I have been actors most of our lives. We count ourselves very lucky to have found a way to make our living as artists. We also teach, and are involved with community activism, as well as projects within our communities and around the country. We feel compelled to get involved in these efforts because we feel it is part of being an artist: to see and hear others and to be seen and heard; to try to understand the world and to make it a better place for all.

I have a small article I tore out of a Playbill over 30 years ago. In truth, it is not really an article, but rather a small segment of a monologue from a play entitled Another Time, a World War II drama by Ronald Harwood. I have kept it with me all these years, reinforcing it with Scotch tape as it has aged and torn as I look to it often. It is something that I have read to my acting and improvisational students the first day of every class I have ever taught.

“It’s no secret that I am a lover of books, a lover of poetry, a lover of art. I believe in art. Art, I believe, is an expression of what is best about each and every one of us…There’s not a thought in my head, not a feeling in my body, that art hasn’t, in one way or another, informed and fired…I believe art might, just might, turn the whole world upside down. Alright not the whole world, I don’t believe in miracles, but one individual world, and that’s a chance, in my opinion, you’re meant to take. After all, I speak from personal experience.”

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I was a young actor, fresh out of graduate school, when I first came upon this and it resonated with me then, and it has continued to deepen its root in me as I have gotten older. Art is an essential part of who we are and how we communicate. We are in challenging times. The inequities within our culture are tearing us apart, and they have been for quite some time. There are no easy answers or solutions. But there is one thing I think we all could be better at: we could listen to each other more. Outside In Theatre is an attempt to establish a physical and digital space in which voices and stories can be discovered, evolved and shared. It intends to be a welcoming and nurturing space — a resource for artists shaping their personal stories and a resource for audiences to witness and to participate in.

And, although this may seem a simple goal, I would be remiss if I didn’t reflect upon the more layered truths this pursuit is based upon.

My mother, Carol Hall, was a composer/lyricist. Throughout her life as an artist, she nurtured a myriad of successes: she had successful shows on Broadway and off, some of which she also performed in or produced; she was the first of two women signed as solo artists by Elektra Records in 1970 (the other woman being Carole King); she wrote for albums that won Grammy Awards, she was nominated for Tony Awards, she was awarded Obie Awards, and has two Gold Albums; her songs have been performed and covered by Mabel Mercer, Barbara Streisand, Frederica von Stade, Big Bird, Dolly Parton, RuPaul, Bill Evans, Tony Bennett and more; she wrote songs for Free To Be You and Me (It’s Alright to Cry and Parents are People), Sesame Street, and is probably best known for writing the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She created a legacy of work as an artist.

She also was my mom, and I am part of her legacy along with my sister, Susannah. I spent most of my childhood playing underneath the piano where she created her art. Her songs became the soundtrack of my life. But all her achievements aside, her greatest success, in my opinion, was her relationship with the artists around her. A lifetime member of the Dramatists Guild Council and a vice-president of the Dramatists Guild Foundation, she helped develop ground rules for dramatist’s contracts that addressed the inequities of her time. She championed the rights of writers nationwide, was a Tony nominator and Tony voter, directed grants to theaters across the country, mentored young writers and was a steward for developing artists. One of the things she believed was that artists needed a place of their own in which to work, where they felt inspired, supported, and free to explore.

With this in mind, she established the Dramatists Guild Foundation Music Hall. As she stated: “I wanted to give our writers something they could really use, so I decided to give them some space!” The Music Hall is a space which can be booked by writers creating for the theater at no cost to themselves, where they can continue to develop the projects they are working on. To this day, the Music Hall has a fully-booked reservation calendar. Not a day goes by that someone isn’t creating or revising or performing their work in the Music Hall. My mom just wanted to give artists the chance to create their art.

My mom nurtured artists. My mom nurtured me. I am part of her legacy. She passed 3 years ago, and part of what she left in me as an artist now gives rise to Outside In Theatre. If it were not for her, this entire venture would not have been possible.

Outside In Theatre hopes to carry on her legacy, and to build its own, inspired by artists in the neighborhoods around it and around the world.

Outside In Theatre believes that art might, just might, turn one individual world upside down. We believe it is a chance we are all meant to take.

We hope that you will join us in this journey.

Thank you,
Daniel Blinkoff and Tamlyn Tomita