was born in Oxford, Mississippi, and grew up in Rome, Georgia.  Since Prospect’s founding in 1998, Cara has worked to establish the company as a vital presence in NYC’s theater community and leader in the field of musical theater development.

Through Prospect, she has collaborated frequently with composer and lyricist Peter Mills, creating new musicals including Honor, Evergreen, The Rockae, The Pursuit of Persephone, The Taxi Cabaret, The Flood, Illyria, Lonely Rhymes, and The Alchemists.  She also collaborated with Susan DiLallo, Peter Mills, and Stephen Weiner on Iron Curtain, a new musical which was developed in July 2008 at the O’Neill Theatre Center and at the 2009 NAMT Festival of New Musicals, and which received the 2006 Innovative Theatre Award for “Outstanding Production of a Musical.”  She has directed numerous other company productions including Once Upon a Time in New Jersey, The Book of the Dun Cow, The House of Bernarda Alba, DIDO (& Aeneas), Danton’s Death, Twelfth Night, Everyman, and others.   Cara has also directed for NYC’s Oberon Theatre Ensemble (Othello), the Village Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals (Issaquah, WA), GMT Productions (Rome, GA), the Goodwill Theatre (Binghamton, NY) and the Gallery Players (NYC).

Cara was honored to receive the 2002 “Lucille Lortel Award” for Emerging Women Artists from the League of Professional Theatre Women, an organization which she now serves as Vice President of Communications.  She received 2004 and 2007 “New Directors / New Works” Grants from the Drama League.  She was educated at Princeton University, from which she graduated in 1996 with an A.B. in Anthropology and a Certificate in Theater, and in the M.F.A. Program for Directing at Brooklyn College, where she was named 2006 “Alumna of the Year.”  She has worked at such notable NYC non-profits as Manhattan Theatre Club, American Ballet Theatre, and HERE Arts Center.  Cara has also published a children’s book, A Stone Promise, which she wrote and illustrated (Landmark Editions Inc., 1991).

She is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the League of Professional Theatre Women, the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and is a Trustee of the Princeton Triangle Club.