Appalachian Season
Recently honoring Wilma Dykeman, a local Southern Appalachian feminist, activist, author, and heroine who championed social justice and the French Broad River.
Image of App Winter show - crow and bear
Image of.... blessing circle....
Image of River Man - Long Man - Puppetry
Appalachian Season is a production container for bioregional awareness, cultural and personal evolution, collaborative futures, and creative expression.
The mythical theater piece "Appalachian Winter" was my first production piece, and I have since continued collaboration with The Faerie Kin and Street Creature Puppet Club to produce several works of bioregional pageantry – including the River Man (Long Man) and ecological performance pieces for adults and children.
My mother loved mythology and directing plays, while my father was a farmer, linguist, humanitarian, and lay cosmic philosopher. To those threads I add communitarianism and a love of life sciences and personal growth work.
I hope you will support my efforts as I am living my passion to its fullest - wanting to better the world, fulfill my own potential, and give back in this lifetime in the best ways I can.
Summer 2014:
"I'm wanting to put together a collaborative performance cycle with the Appalachian seasons at its core that encompasses history, bioregionalism, the human mythological life cycle, cosmology, and Southern Appalachian cultural and ecological archetypes. It’s designed to raise awareness about the bioregion, the commonality of the seasons of nature and the “seasons” of the human life, inspire future-visioning around Southern Appalachian sustainability, and create a sense of place-based meaning and purpose among participants, the audience, and the Southern Appalachian community." — Michael Whitmire, Summer 2014
The greater mission of Appalachian Season is to serve as a bioregional production container that fosters biocultural awareness, artistic expression, and collective and individual reflection on purpose, place, and identity in our homes and hearts.
I aspire to present as an ecological activist for both the inner and outer worlds. The inner world of life purpose, meaningfulness, reflection, and joy; and the outer world of our bioregion, natural world, resilience, and bioeconomic, ecologial and cultural abundance and flowering. The greater container of my intention in my work is to bring awareness and reflection to these inner and outer worlds - within the context of our ecological setting, Appalachia, the Southeastern United States, and the World -- and by so doing to create space for life, breath, purpose, abundance, meaningfulness, choice, contentment, and commitment in the people and setting in which we live.
My intentions for the future are not only to keep bringing this work to the public in the form of collaborative performance, but to bring healthy, positive transformation to individuals, communities, and the region in which we live - from within the reflective sphere and within the world that surrounds us.