SHORT SCRIPT FINALIST

reading on saturday, September 28th

12:15pm at the Wilshire Screening Room

STANDING IN WATER by Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich

WRITER BIOGRAPHY

Kathleen M Caprario-Ulrich

Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich is an award winning visual artist, an art educator, writer and occasional stand up comic. Her sense of humor is rooted in the absurd and an appreciation for the awkward and painfully funny process of reinventing one’s life through a personal, seismic shift. A short version of her feature project, "Mourning After," won the 2015 Short Screenplay Award at the Lady Filmmakers Film Festival, Beverly Hills, CA and comes out of Caprario-Ulrich’s own experience of being widowed before the age of fifty.

SYNOPSIS - After her husband’s suicide, an imaginative woman reclaims her life through comedy.

character breakdown

NOTE: The roles of Marlitt Garton, Stand Up Marlitt and Captain Kathryn Janeway/Marlitt are all played by the same actor. 

MARLITT GARTON, 50 We meet Marlitt just after her 50th birthday and several months after her husband dies from suicide. Marlitt is a Type-A personality who lowered her expectations and ambitions in exchange for a happy family, or so she thought. Marlitt and her son are now completely dependent on each other and—as the saying goes— dependency indeed breeds contempt. Sometimes it’s like there are two teenagers in the house with one, pre-menopausal. She’s an artist and teaches art at a local community college; her creativity provides her with insight and a means to cope as she often escapes into a fantasy world. 

STAND UP MARLITT, 60’s Confident of her and her son’s survival, this Marlitt has turned her anger and grief into laughter. She’s somewhat shameless and also vulnerable—when she chooses to be. She’s a work in progress but, hey, that beats the alternative. 

CAPTAIN KATHRYN JANEWAY/MARLITT, 50’s Captain Kathryn Janeway, the fictional lead character of the Star Trek Voyager television series, is presented in Marlitt’s imagination as her alter ego. Captain Janeway appears as Marlitt (not Kate Mulgrew from in the series), and is a reflection of Marlitt’s unconscious self, guiding her through the uncharted territory of single parenting, grief and anger. 

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MAX GARTON, 16 Max is Marlitt’s and her late husband’s only child. He’s stubborn and despite being intelligent, underperforms at school. A Star Wars nerd and computer whiz, his well-developed left-brain is often in conflict with his mother’s right-brain approach to life. His grief is expressed as anger and Max is desperate to distance himself from the father he once loved—coping isn’t easy for this one.