has been working with Prospect Theater Company since their last summer in Rome, GA in 2000. After graduating from Wake Forest University in 2001 with a degree in both Communication and Theater, Corinne returned to her hometown of New York, where she began her career in public relations. While working for Origlio Public Relations and later in the press office at NYC & Company, New York City’s official tourism and marketing association, Corinne has spearheaded the press efforts for the past six seasons of Prospect Theater Company as well as Big Bang! (Collective Unconscious), Big Girl (New York International Fringe Festival 2003), Christmas with the Flamingos (Cofounder), President Harding is a Rock Star (Les Freres Corbusier), Cratchett Farm (Blank Page Productions / Dilion’s Reprise Room), Celebrate Good Times (Macbeth) (TheaterFaction) as well as Playscripts, Inc. Corinne is enjoying her fourth season as a bee in the press office of New York City Opera.

Jaime is a graduate of Cornell University and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Drawing and Painting. He has been involved with Prospect since 1999, serving as designer for all marketing materials, including season brochures, postcards, and posters, and is now working as a freelance Graphic Designer. To see his full online portfolio, visit www.JaimeVallesDesign.com.

Kat originally hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended Penn State University for Theater Arts. Kat has been with PTC as its Production Stage Manager since its Summer 2000 season. She has either directly stage managed and/or hired the stage management staff and crew for all subsequent productions. Some of her favorite PTC Productions include: A Little Night Music (2000), The Flood (2001 & 2006), Illyria (2002 & 2008), Unbound (2005), Don Carlos (2004), Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge (2009). Iron Curtain (2011). Outside of PTC, Kat has stage managed regionally at the Mountain Playhouse in Pennsylvania, The Pirate Playhouse in Sanibel, Florida, Chester Theater Company in the Berkshires, Cape Playhouse in Cape Cod, and the Kravis center for Performing arts in West Palm Beach, Florida. Selected New York stage management credits include: Altar Boyz, My Big Gay Italian Wedding for Davenport Theatricals, La Boheme, Cavaleria Rusticana, I Paggilaci for New York City Opera, President Harding is A Rock Star, Boozy, Heddatron for Les Freres Corbusier, Little Flower of East Orange for The Public/LABrynith Theater Company, Soul Samurai for Mi-Yi Theater Company/Vampire Cowboys, & CHINA! The Whole Enchilada for Big Boy Strut Productions. Kat’s favorite PTC ongoing production–her marriage to her husband Jaime, whom she met when she joined PTC in 2000. For full credits please visit: http://www.linkedin.com/in/katwest.

is one of Prospect’s co-founders.  Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he worked in theater and television production there before moving to New York, where he has worked with several arts organizations for the past 12 years. He was the head of the Rehearsal Departments of both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera, and has sung on the stage at City Opera as well as the New Jersey Opera Festival and Ópera de Puerto Rico.  He has also performed in many of Prospect’s productions, originating roles in The Alchemists, The Flood, and Cornography.  Together with his brother, he made his first film, “Casi casi” (see Jaime Vallés below), which is now available from HBO Video.  Tony is a graduate of Princeton University.

A lyricist, composer, and book writer, Peter recently was honored to receive the 2010 Kleban Prize for lyrics.  He also received the 2007 Fred Ebb Award, as well as 2006 Drama Desk nominations for his score and orchestrations of The Pursuit of Persephone.  He has received $10,000 grants from the ASCAP Foundation (The 2003 Richard Rodgers’ New Horizons Award) and from the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation (2002), in recognition of his excellence as an emerging musical theater writer.

In 2000, he completed a M.F.A. degree in Musical Theater Writing at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts, and was subsequently selected as a Dramatist’s Guild Fellow for 2000-2001.  Originally from Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Pete graduated from Princeton University in 1995 with a degree in English/Dramatic Literature.

His first musical was The Taxi Cabaret, originally produced in the Spring of 2000 at the Duplex Cabaret Theatre and published in 2004 by Samuel French, Inc.  In 2001, Pete co-authored The Flood, a new musical based on the true story of the 1993 Mississippi River floods, which was selected for the prestigious ASCAP Workshop.  In 2002, Pete completed Illyria, based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which went on to further production and a cast recording at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in 2004.  In 2005 he penned The Pursuit of Persephone, a musical based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s college romance with Ginevra King.  He has also created The Rockae (2007), a hard rock musical based on Euripedes’ classic The Bacchae;  Honor (2008), a samurai musical based on Shakespeare’s As You Like It;  The Alchemists, a musical romance set in Regency England (2003); and Lonely Rhymes, a collection of contemporary comic songs (2004); Golden Boy of the Blue Ridge, a bluegrass adaptation of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World (2009); and Evergreen, an original holiday musical (2009).

During his Princeton career, Peter wrote more than 35 songs for the Princeton Triangle Club, for which he now serves on the Board of Trustees and as a writing workshop coordinator.  A founding member of Prospect, Pete has also music directed many of the company’s endeavors, as well as composed original music for The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. www.pcmills.com

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.

Originally from Santa Barbara, California, Melissa is a founding member of Prospect Theater Company. She holds an AB in History from Princeton University and an MFA in Theater Management from the Yale School of Drama where she received The Morris J. Kaplan Award. Her practical training at the Guthrie Theatre in Minnesota, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, and Yale Repertory Theatre has spanned Arts Education, Marketing, Stage and Company Management, and Administration. Additionally, she served as the Marketing Director at Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara, and is currently the Program Manager at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Prospect Theater Company’s goal is to connect communities of artists and audiences to each other and to theatrical history by re-interpreting classic plays and musicals, and to use these connections to collaboratively create new works. We strive to connect theater’s present to its past—in order to build its future.

While our productions are eclectic in genre and style, usually our work shares the following characteristics:

• Heightened language:  whether it’s song lyrics, a classic verse play, or contemporary writing with a poetic feel.
• Ensemble-based performance:  Prospect shows tend to have large casts and tell stories involving many characters.
• Historical context:  a strong grounding in a specific period, or a contemporary writer in dialogue with a historic voice or style.
• And, we use all elements of performance — text, music, movement, and design values — to fully create a theatrical world.

Pictured above:  Rosalind in As You Like It (1999), photo by Cara Reichel.
Below:  Yoshiro in Honor (2008), photo by Richard Termine.