Kara Cantrell is an actor, director, acting instructor, and theatre administrator who has appeared on stage in the Atlanta area in Synchronicity Performance Group's production of The Van Gogh Cafe, Pecos Bill and the Ghost Stampede at Theatre in the Square, Wrong Turn at Lungfish at Stage Door Players, The Most Massive Woman Wins and "Barbie's Dream House" (Marki Shalloe) with The Process Theatre Company, Peter and the Wolf (and Me) at Jewish Theatre of the South, several seasonal shows at Stone Mountain Park, The Trojan Women with Savage Tree Arts Project, Geek Love with Sensurround Stagings, several educational performances with Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre, as a storyteller for two seasons of ART Station's Annual Tour of Southern Ghosts, and in BUG at Actor’s Express. In August of this year, she will return to Theatre in the Square in the role of Madge Larabee in Steven Dietz's Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure.
Kara directed the world premiere of Ralegh Marcell’s A Little Bit of Texas for the Georgia State University Players. She has also served as the assistant box office manager for Actor’s Express and Arts at Emory (University) Box Office, as house manager at Horizon Theatre Co., and as publicity coordinator for Southern Miss Theatre at the University of Southern Mississippi and University Theatre at the University of Georgia.
She is currently an Entertainment Lead at Stone Mountain Park where she performs duties as diverse as improvisation, stage management, directing, acting, and fetching toilet tissue. This spring, she will direct SMP's "Rosie the Riveter" character, and she is directing and performing in SMP's summer improv/sketch show, "Col. Adair's Southern Fried Shakespeare Co.," which she conceptualized and co-wrote.
She earned her MFA in acting from the University of Georgia in 2005 where she performed such varied roles as Gwen in Fifth of July, Antigone in the eponymous adaptation by Jean Anouilh, Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and a man-crazed pelican in Aristophanes' The Birds. At UGA, she also directed an original Open Theatre-style performance called "The Persephone Project," and wrote, directed, and performed original one-woman shows in which she portrayed the Bell Witch of Tennessee and Aldous Huxley. She also studied at the University of Southern Mississippi where her roles included Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in Howard Brenton's Bloody Poetry and Paulina in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. She earned her BFA in acting from Western Kentucky University in 1997. Kara has taught acting and theatre studies at the University of Georgia, Georgia Perimeter College, Jewish Theatre of the South’s Drama Camp, and the Ferst Center for the Arts Drama Camp.
Kara lives in Decatur, Georgia with her husband, actor-musician- composer, Dolph Amick, and a smelly hound dog named Lulu.