Who was Mary Magdalene?  In 600 A.D., Pope Gregory labeled her a penitent prostitute. Yet there are no direct references in the New Testament to confirm this labeling. The Christian Gospels do tell us however, that she was permitted to perform the anointing of Jesus Christ, a task traditionally reserved for the senior priestess in the Isis tradition. And perhaps, most importantly, all four gospels agree that she was the first to witness the Resurrection. Why should she not be most remembered as the Apostle of the Apostles (which she was called in other first-century texts), instead of penitent prostitute? The Gnostic Texts, along with other first-century literature, reveal another side to this powerful, mysterious woman.

 This film incorporates excerpts from the theatrical production My Magdalene along with interviews and footage of the sacred sites in Europe and the Middle East community. Producers, playwrights and partners, and founders of The StarHouse, Lila and David Tresemer, Ph.D., have followed the enigmatic trail of Mary Magdalene throughout Israel as well as France, to museums and through the works of scholars.  This film compiles their intuitive insights.

• On location footage, Mary's home in Israel, Mary's caves and cathedrals in France
• Featuring Sharron Rose, author os "The Path of the Priestess," with original choreography
• From the founders of The StarHouse in Boulder, Colorado

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the People and Community Involved in the Making of

 “Rediscovering Mary Magdalene —the making of a mythic drama”

Producers: Lila and David Tresemer

DAVID TRESEMER, Ph.D., has a doctorate in psychology (Harvard University). He founded The StarHouse in Boulder, Colorado, in 1991 (see www.TheStarHouse.org). He has written in many areas, ranging from The Scythe Book: Mowing Hay, Cutting Weeds, and Harvesting Small Grains with Hand Tools (Chambersberg, PA: Alan Hood, 2^nd ed., 1996) to astrological books, including Signs in the Heavens: Comets and Our Future (Boulder, CO: All Seasons Chalice, 2001).  With his wife, Lila, he has co-authored several plays produced in the United States, including My Magdalene and Darwin in the Dreamtime (winner: Moondance Festival 2004).  Their Magdalene research led to the discovery of Jean-Yves Leloup’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (Inner Traditions International, 2002) which they had translated and to which they added a preface.

LILA TRESEMER (Laura-Lea Cannon) has been writing and producing plays with her husband, David Tresemer, for the last eight years.  She brings her photography and production skills to the vision and creation of these plays as multi-media mythic dramas.   Lila has been a photographer and multi-media producer since the early ‘70s. She has produced events for audiences of several thousands which combined spiritual themes with multi-media theatrical presentations, backing up John Denver, Jack Canfield, John Gray, Barbara D’Angelis, Ken Blanchard, Tom Crum, The Humane Society of the United States, Global Assembly of Women in the Environment, and others. She is President of The StarHouse in Boulder, and is the founder of The Path of the Ceremonial Arts (PCA), a three-year training for women.  PCA is beginning an outreach program for women from Israel and Palestine, partly as a result of Lila’s love and connection with the Middle East through Magdalene.

David and Lila also have a healing retreat on a small island near Tasmania, Australia, called "Healing Dreams”.

HEIDI ROSE ROBBINS, Director of My Magdalene.  Former Director of Shakespeare at Interlochen Center for the Arts, artist-in-residence at Governor’s School for the Arts, co-author of Baring Fruit, a one woman show of Anne Frank, and director of many plays in Boulder, Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

SHARRON ROSE, M.A.Ed, choreographer for My Magdalene, she is also interviewed in this DVD. Rose is the author of the recent award-winning book The Path of the Priestess: A Guidebook for Awakening the Divine Feminine (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions), creator of the Yoga of Light; Meditations, Mudras and Expressions of the Divine Feminine DVD, and is an internationally acclaimed teacher, writer and performer in World Mythology, Religion and the Sacred Arts of Dance, Music and Theatre. For the past twenty-seven years she has worked in the fields of education and the esoteric arts to investigate, integrate and impart the knowledge and wisdom of ancient and traditional cultures throughout the world. This work has taken her to India, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Europe, Hawaii, South America and New Zealand, and has been disseminated through master classes lectures, workshops, live performance and DVD.

DUNCAN CAMPBELL, interviewed in Rediscovering Mary Magdalene, holds degrees from the Sorbonne, Yale College (where he was a Scholar of the House), and Harvard Law School. Presaging an essential aspect of his life work, in his senior year at Yale in 1966 Duncan founded and was the spokesperson for the pioneering Committee for Coeducation, which was instrumental in Yale College admitting women several years later. His experience in the last forty years has included the fields of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, law, business, politics, communications, and teaching. He has traveled widely, in both industrial and developing countries, including indigenous cultures, and has received instruction and initiation in a number of spiritual and cultural traditions. He has been a participant in various myth-making historical events, including Woodstock ‘69, on the barricades in front of the Russian White House in Moscow on the night of August 20-21, 1991, during the Second Russian Revolution, and the Global Forum and Citizens Summit at the Rio, Brazil UNCED Earth Summit in June 1992. He has taught and presented in a variety of venues in the U.S., including Harvard College, the John F. Kennedy School of Politics, Omega events, and numerous others, as well as in Europe, Africa, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Central and South America, and India. He has hosted his Living Dialogues programs with internationally renowned and pioneering authors and visionaries on public television, radio and the Internet. He writes:

"One of the major themes of my work is the coming into being in our time of the Sacred Marriage -- what the Greeks call the hieros gamos  -- the union of the masculine and feminine energies in a mature way which will engender a new planetary consciousness. To paraphrase C.G. Jung, the world consciousness, and particularly the modern Western mind, must have iconic representations of the feminine equal in imaginative potency to those of the masculine. This will come about despite any institutional or cultural holding back, because the very nature of the human psyche demands this for its fulfillment and continuation as a species. The only questions are when and how this will emerge. It is we whom the cosmos invites at this point in its evolution to midwife and co-create that manifestation in a myriad of ways, one of which is the re-telling of the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in its deeper dimensionality. In this, I am honored to have been a part of the creation of this DVD by David Tresemer and his wife Lila Sophia, a couple who embody the Sacred Marriage, and the many other midwifing individuals, living and dead, who have brought forth this new seed of understanding the archetypal story." 

JESSE MANNO, composed and performed original music for My Magdalene. Manno has been Music Director of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Colorado, Boulder, since 1991 and faculty since 2001.  He has composed over 80 original soundtracks for dance, theatre, film, and multimedia productions, which have been performed all across the USA and in numerous European and Asian venues.  He has long been a performer of Balkan and Middle Eastern folk music with the Colorado based group "Sherefe".

BETH QUIST, composed and performed vocals in original music for My Magdalene. Quist is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer, who began playing piano at age 2. Her early musical influences were "Batman," "Star Trek," and "Dr. Zhivago." "I'm a Little Leopard Prowling Around in Sneakers" was her first musical composition at age 8. She has a 4-octave soprano voice, and plays piano, keyboards, santour (hammered dulcimer), dumbek, daff, guitar, flute, and various other toys that she can get her hands on. Her music combines influences from the Balkans, the Middle East, and India with her Western upbringing.† She is currently the lead singer and multi-instrumentalist for a new Cirque du Soleil production set to open in late 2004 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. She also performs solo, with the Guarneri Underground, and sings with Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra.

THE STARHOUSE/ALL SEASONS CHALICE All Seasons Chalice is a trans-denominational community of people dedicated to honoring the earth and all beings through ceremony, theatre, music, and dance. All Seasons Chalice takes its name from the changing seasons, and all other earthly and celestial cycles, which the changing seasons symbolize. Chalice represents the cup of imagination that holds and gives form to the aspirations of the human heart. David and Lila write:

"The StarHouse is our sanctum and ceremonial center. It was constructed according to many of the traditional theories of cathedral and temple building, as well as ancient geometric principles of ideal symmetry, proportion and harmony. Its axis is aligned with the North Star. It is perfectly oriented to the four directions. It has 12 sides to represent astrologically all the cycles of manifestation, thereby making it a powerful healing space. The StarHouse embodies in its structure the changing seasons, cycles of the moon and fluctuations in sunlight. All Seasons Chalice invites people of all faiths, races, and creeds to join us in celebrating the cosmic rhythms of change."