Writer-Director Kathy Bauer Gives Juliet the Last Word, and Finds Laughter, Independence and Her Mother’s Voice Along the Way
(The Hollywood Times) 9/17/26 – What if Juliet had been allowed to take control of her own story?
Writer-director Kathy Bauer asks exactly that question, with wonderfully playful results, in her new animated short, Romeo and Juliet, a Parody in Silhouette, a clever three-minute reimagining of Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy.
Bauer recently joined The Hollywood Times from Glendale, California, shortly before boarding a flight to Taylor, Texas, where her film is premiering at the She Speaks Film Festival. She described herself as both writer and director of the newly completed film, which she finished this past summer.
The film may be tiny in running time, but its ambitions are anything but.
Using simple silhouette-style animation, humor and an intentionally accelerated telling of one of the world’s most familiar love stories, Bauer turns tragedy on its head while placing Juliet squarely in command of what happens next.
It is funny, fast and surprisingly empowering.
Bauer told me that the project actually began as something much smaller.
“I thought, what are the greatest stories ever told?” she explained. Shakespeare quickly came to mind, and Bauer initially challenged herself to see what she could communicate in only 10 or 20 seconds.
Click below to see our exclusive interview:
The earliest characters were almost like stick figures, she recalled, but something about their movements immediately made her laugh. Other people found them funny as well, and the experiment began growing into an actual film.
That original exercise in brevity ultimately became part of the movie’s point.
Bauer sees the short as something of a commentary on our “age of immediacy,” when everything seems expected to happen faster, including creative production. She first attempted to compress the entire Shakespeare story into one minute before allowing herself a little more room.
And somewhere along the way, Juliet decided she had other plans.
The familiar narrative takes a turn, with Juliet emerging not merely as the doomed young woman audiences have known for centuries, but as the character capable of changing the direction of her own story.
That shift is where Romeo and Juliet, a Parody in Silhouette becomes more than a clever animated gag.
When I asked Bauer why it was important to put Juliet at the center of her version, her answer was refreshingly simple: it happened naturally.
Bauer herself provides Juliet’s voice, there is only a small amount of dialogue, in addition to writing and directing the film.
In a sense, she said, the creative process became a conversation with herself.
“I’m talking to myself in a lot of ways,” Bauer explained. Creating the film allowed her to process what she wanted to say, and Juliet became the natural vehicle for expressing it.
That personal connection gives the film an additional layer.
Yes, this is a parody. Yes, it moves quickly. And yes, Bauer wants us to laugh.
But behind that humor is a filmmaker reclaiming her own voice at precisely the same moment that her heroine is reclaiming hers.
There is another woman whose voice remains very much a part of Bauer’s work: her mother.
Years ago, her mother gave Kathy some wonderfully uncomplicated creative advice: “Do something funny.”
Those words helped inspire Bauer’s first animated film and continue to resonate in her work today.
Her mother also loved Shakespeare, making Romeo and Juliet an especially meaningful source of inspiration.
When I asked whether she could still hear her mother’s voice while making this film, Bauer didn’t hesitate.
“Absolutely.”
Bauer spoke movingly about feeling that her mother remains present in her life and creative work. Even the name of the She Speaks Film Festival carries special significance for her.
“I know that my mother speaks with me,” she said.
Bauer wishes her mother could physically be there to witness the film’s release, but said she knows “in my heart, my mother lives in me” and will be with her throughout the festival weekend.
That sentiment gives the comedy an unexpectedly tender heartbeat.
Her mother’s philosophy, find the humor, even when life isn’t particularly funny, is woven throughout the film.
Bauer is hardly a newcomer to animation.
She spent years working within major animation studios and enjoyed a successful career on numerous productions, including Space Jam and Space Jam 2.
She speaks warmly about those years and the characters and projects she had the opportunity to work on.
But independent filmmaking offers something even a successful studio career cannot always provide: complete creative ownership.
“There’s nothing like being able to express your own voice,” Bauer told me.
Now, there is no studio telling her a film must go in one direction or another. There is no outside editorial authority dictating what the finished piece needs to become.
She can simply say what she wants to say.
For Bauer, returning to filmmaking on her own terms means having “no editing except my own editing” and the freedom to follow an idea wherever it takes her.
That independence can be felt throughout Romeo and Juliet, a Parody in Silhouette. It doesn’t feel like a short created to satisfy a formula. It feels like someone having fun with the medium again.
That makes the She Speaks Film Festival a particularly fitting home for its premiere.
Bauer said she immediately responded to the festival’s name.
For an artist, she explained, creating something is only one part of the process. Being heard is another.
“It’s one thing to create and make something and express yourself,” Bauer said. Having that creation “seen and heard by audiences she hopes is uplifting” completes the equation.
She described herself as both grateful and honored that her “little film” will now have that opportunity.
And there is something beautifully appropriate about that.
A filmmaker rediscovering the freedom of her own voice has made a film in which one of literature’s most famous young women discovers hers.
Ultimately, Bauer doesn’t want viewers walking away contemplating tragedy.
Quite the opposite.
“I want them to feel good, and positive, optimistic,” she told me. “I take the tragedy, and I turn it into a comedy.”
That philosophy once again brings her back to her mother.
Life isn’t always easy, Bauer acknowledged, but people can take difficult experiences and turn them around, sometimes through filmmaking, sometimes through art, and sometimes simply through the decision to find something worth laughing about.
That may be the greatest charm of Romeo and Juliet, a Parody in Silhouette.
In just three minutes, Bauer reminds us that even a story whose ending has been fixed for more than 400 years can change when somebody decides to tell it differently.
Shakespeare gave us the tragedy.
Kathy Bauer gives Juliet another option.
And somewhere, one suspects, her mother is laughing right along with her.
SCREENING INFORMATION:
Romeo & Juliet: A Parody in Silhouette
Saturday, September 19, 2026
U.S. Shorts — 10:40 a.m.–12:50 p.m.
She Speaks Film Festival
McCrory Timmerman Building
201 N. Main St., Taylor, Texas 76574
By: Valerie Milano, The Hollywood Times
