Interview: Caroline Cearley of MIRROR LAKE at Jarrott Productions

When director Caroline Cearley arrived in Austin just a year ago, she didn’t expect to dive into the city’s theatre scene so quickly. Within days, she’d met the team at Jarrott Productions, and before long, she was assisting on DIAL M FOR MURDER. This fall, she returns to the company to helm her Austin directorial debut with MIRROR LAKE, Steven Dietz’s dark, psychological relationship thriller that opens October 16 at Trinity Street Playhouse.

Part love story, part suspense, MIRROR LAKE explores the secrets that linger between two people and what happens when love and fear collide. It’s the perfect October premiere: intimate, eerie, and emotionally precise.

Cearley shared with us recently about her quick immersion into Austin’s theatre community, her love of thrillers, and what it’s been like collaborating with Jarrott Productions on this haunting new play.

BWW: What drew you to Austin’s theatre scene, and what excites you most about joining this community?

Cearley: The first thing that stood out to me about Austin’s theatre scene was how much it felt like a true community. You get the sense that people here genuinely root for one another. Actors, designers, and directors move between companies, share props or set pieces, and help each other. It’s about ingenuity, collaboration, and the shared thrill of making something live.

I stumbled pretty serendipitously into this community almost immediately after moving here. On my second day in Austin, I was chatting with a neighbor who happened to have been a film professor at UT. Within a few days, she connected me to Janelle Buchanan, who introduced me to a few artistic directors in town, and before I knew it, I was working with Jarrott Productions.

Over the past year, I’ve watched this community turn churches, warehouses, and multipurpose halls into fully realized worlds. That kind of resourceful artistry feels so pure to me—people doing theatre not because everything is easy, but because they value this thing highly enough to make it work. That’s the kind of scene I want to contribute to: one built on creativity, generosity, and a bit of scrappy magic.

BWW: What spoke to you personally about Steven Dietz’s MIRROR LAKE, and how are you approaching it as a director?

Cearley: Mirror Lake really struck me with how it balances being both a psychological thriller and a very honest story of connection. I’ve always been drawn to thrillers, not just for the suspense but for what that tension reveals about people. Thrillers are a fantastic mechanism to push those deeply human truths to the surface.

Directing thrillers is very much my lane. It’s what I’ve studied and produced the most, and it’s the genre where I feel most at home. The precision that thrillers demand—rhythm, restraint, silence, and revelation—continues to fascinate me. Steven’s writing captures all of that; it moves with a haunting inevitability and relentlessness. It’s tight, propulsive, almost musical in its pacing, with love and fear living right beside each other.

On a personal note, I’m recently engaged, so exploring a marriage many years in felt especially compelling. You don’t have to live every experience of a play to tell the story truthfully as long as you lead with empathy and curiosity. What pulled me in here was the question of how far we’ll go to truly know and hold onto someone we love—something almost everyone can relate to.

BWW: How has working with Jarrott Productions shaped your growth, and what has this collaboration been like?

Cearley: I honestly couldn’t overstate their impact on my growth if I tried. Breaking into a new theatre scene as a director can be tricky because it takes time for people to know what you bring to the table. But from the start, David Jarrott and Will Gibson Douglas saw something in me and gave me the space to prove it. That kind of trust is rare.

What I love most about working with Jarrott Productions is that their generosity goes beyond the art. Directing can be a lonely experience sometimes, but with David and Will, I’ve never felt alone. They believe in me and in this show, and that kind of support changes how you show up every day.

They’ve also built an environment that’s collaborative in the best sense. We all have our strengths and limits, and they’ve created a space where I can say, “Here’s what I’m great at, here’s what I’m still learning,” which is difficult as a perfectionist. We fill in the gaps for each other. You can feel the care and precision David put into founding this company, and it’s in capable, passionate hands with Will. I feel very lucky to have found them so early in my Austin chapter.

BWW: What elements of your training from UNC School of the Arts are you bringing into your directing style, and how do you hope to cultivate your artistic voice here in Austin?

Cearley: There isn’t a rehearsal or meeting where I’m not pulling from something I learned there—a bit of advice, a technique, or even just a mindset that’s stayed with me. I still keep in touch with some of my professors, and they’ve continued to be mentors in my professional life. When I hit a crossroads in my career or come up against something tricky in rehearsal, Carl Forsman is still the first person I call.

Mirror Lake has been a great reminder of how much that foundation continues to shape me. The script leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It doesn’t prescribe much in terms of staging or design, which is both liberating and a little daunting. At UNCSA, we were taught that when you’re not sure where to start, the answer isn’t to tiptoe around ideas but to try them fully. You can’t find the truth of a choice unless you commit to it all the way.

That’s exactly how we began this process—by testing bold ideas without hesitation and discovering what this version of the play really wanted to be. Moving to Austin has felt like the next chapter in that process: figuring out who I am as an artist, but this time in conversation with a whole new community.

BWW: What kinds of stories or theatrical experiences are you most eager to explore in the future?

Cearley: Thrillers and mysteries are where I feel most at home. I can be a fairly anxious person, and horror might not sound like the obvious antidote to anxiety, but for me, it’s been one of the most effective ways to face it. I want to offer audiences stories that make them lean forward in their seats—to face fear safely, to feel seen in it, and to leave a little braver than they came in.

That’s the kind of work I want to keep making: suspenseful, atmospheric plays that use fear, humor, and catharsis to help people see themselves more clearly. I’m interested in stories that ask difficult and engaging questions about time, free will, and responsibility—the ones that keep me up at night and add color to life.

In the long term, I’d love to keep building relationships across Austin’s theatre community, directing for different companies, developing new work, and continuing to explore how thrillers can offer people a space to process the world. These days, when it feels like there’s dark news around every corner, finding reprieve, relatability, and some sense of power feels like an honest step toward healing.