 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Five years ago I spent twelve months traveling the country as a tour manager for a sixty-five city corporate exhibit. As we crisscrossed the country I saw first hand how the nation's cities were becoming more and more alike. And as I drove through each homogenized local, passing the same chain stores again and again in what seemed like one endless strip mall, I became more and more interested in the relationship between how we as a people, as a species, were changing individually, and how we were changing our country and the world. I became fascinated with the interrelationship between personal and social transformation, between spirituality and globalization. When I finally returned home at the end of the year I decided to embark upon a rather crazy project. I got into my head the wild notion that I should use all the money I had saved while I was on tour and take a year and half sabbatical to research and write a book about spirituality and globalization. Because I am the sort of person who thinks crazy thoughts and then does them, I did take a year and a half off to research and write my first nonfiction book, which I eventually entitled The Chrysalis Age: A Handbook Toward Spiritual and Global Transformation in the New Millennium. It was the ideas explored in The Chrysalis Age that became the driving force behind writing the stage play Dark September Rain. And it was the desire to present these ideas to as wide an audience as possible that convinced me to shoot Dark September Rain as a film. I have also prepared a reading list of books that influenced the The Chrysalis Age and Dark September Rain. You can read the stage play of Dark September Rain as well as essays and excerpts from The Chrysalisage as a PDF book. Part of my
desire in creating this film was to prompt discussion and debate about
the ideas the film presents; particularly the different worldviews that
are available to each of us, from Traditional and Modern, to Postmodern
and Integral, to Spiritual. Toward that end, I have created a list of
Ten Questions to help facilitate a
discussion of the film. To gain some understanding of how I approached directing Dark September Rain, I suggest taking a look at my Notes Toward an Integral Theater. To better understand the ideas behind the play I suggest reading a few of the excerpts from The Chrysalis Age that are provided here: Excerpts
from The Chrysalis Age
For additional exploration of these ideas you can browse the links page. |
