Film script staged reading set for Holocaust Museum

Kimberly M. Wetherell A staged reading from a script about the secret life of one of the “hidden children” of the Holocaust will take place on Thursday, May 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, 55 5th St. S. General admission is $9 per person and free to museum members.

Lullaby was written by awardwinning filmmaker, opera director and Clearwater native Kimberly M. Wetherell and was inspired in part by the Florida Holocaust Museum. The film is currently in development.

Lullaby is the fictional story of Tess O’Keefe, a devout Polish Catholic immigrant living on Flor ida ’s Gulf Coast. When she is uprooted to a retirement home after her husband’s death, her granddaughter Kathleen stumbles across a mysterious box. The box reveals Tess’ secret past as one of Poland’s hidden children of the Holocaust — children concealed from the Nazis by way of disguise, false identity or by hiding away — causing her fragile tapestry of lies to unravel with excruciating, yet ultimately inspiring, consequences.

Cast members for the staged reading of Lullaby practices for their performance. This unique sneak peek into the inner workings of a developing feature film will be a multimedia event, including a staged screenplay reading, live musical performances and a short film that will be followed by an intimate conversation with writer/ director/producer Wetherell.

The May 19 screenplay reading cast features Orlando’s Annie Kidwell as Tess and St. Petersburg’s Geneva Rae as Kathleen, and includes local actors Ned Avrill- Snell, Greg Milton, Stephen Ray and Francine Wolf. It also features local operatic soprano, Colleen McGrath.

The Holocaust Museum was one of several locations chosen specifi- cally for the story of the film. Wetherell explains, “The granddaughter, Kathleen, discovers that she is the descendant of not merely a Polish Jew, but a Holocaust survivor. Having been raised within a devout Catholic family of intense secretkeepers, she turns to the most obvious and accessible place she can think of – the museum. What she discovers there about her family, and consequently, herself, is the emotional climax of the film.”

Wetherell continues, “That particular scene is drawn from my own experience. In 2006 I began researching Pinellas County’s Jewish community and was so surprised to hear about the museum. I didn’t even know it existed. I was completely overwhelmed by the permanent collection, most pointedly, the Treblinka train car and the tiny ring found between its planks. It immediately became personal. This wasn’t just something that happened in history books, it happened to people. Real people.” Wetherell will be working with the museum’s Executive Director Carolyn Bass and Curator of Exhibitions and Collections Erin Blankenship on this project.

The film is set for shooting in the fall of 2011, almost exclusively in the Tampa Bay Area, save a few scenes planned for New York, where Wetherell has lived for the past 11 years. But having grown up in Clearwater, her plan has always been to shoot the film “back home.”

Wetherell relocated to St. Petersburg last June to begin local, hands-on development of the project. Wetherell has high hopes for making Lullaby entirely a Tampa Bay production, but she is seeking funds to make the movie possible.

Wetherell graduated from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago. She has been an opera director as well as a film director and producer, collecting several awards for her short films which have screened in major film festivals around the world, including the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA), the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, the St. Louis Film Festival and The Hamptons Film Festival. Her most recent feature film, Today’s Special (as associate producer), was written by and stars Tampa’s own Aasif Mandvi (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), and has played to packed houses across the country and locally at The Tampa Theatre last November and will be released on DVD May 24.

More information about Lullaby and investing in the independent film can be found at www.lullabymovie.com. To RSVP to the event, call (727) 820-0100, ext. 236.