Five thousand years ago Sumerian scribes pressed a story into clay, recording one of the oldest known myths in human history. Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld tells of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, who dares to journey to the realm ruled by her sister Ereshkigal. It is a tale of power and surrender, of death and return, of darkness and transformation.
This fall Prescott audiences will experience the story anew as Third Road Theatre presents Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld . The production is the culmination of a four-year evolution, beginning as a modest puppet show and now emerging as a multilayered performance of music, dance, projection, puppetry and chorus.
At the heart of the production is musician, writer and storyteller Meg Bohrman, who conceived the show, wrote its script and music, and serves as its narrator. “I’m a bit of an Inanna nerd,” she says with a laugh. “I discovered this story through my work as a doula. It’s a myth of descent and transformation, which is exactly what birth and life is about. When everything falls apart, when you find yourself in the underworld, the question is: how do you come back?”
Bohrman roots her script in the Sumerian text, weaving ancient lines with modern interpretation. “It’s the oldest story ever written down,” she notes. “But it’s also timeless. Inanna’s journey reflects every fall from grace we endure, loss, upheaval, even the collective crises we face today. Yet it offers hope: the promise that descent can lead to rebirth.”
The production’s director of movement and choreography, Bonnie Miller, describes it as “a deeply collaborative process.” Originally joining as a performer, Miller has stepped into a more active creative role this year. “I think the arts give us a way to feel the things we don’t know we need to feel,” she explains. “This story takes audiences into the darkness, but it also helps them process and integrate that reality, so they can move forward with compassion and resilience.”
The show’s staging reflects its layers of meaning. A Greek chorus and choir punctuate the narration; dancers embody Inanna’s stripping away and renewal; shadow puppetry and live-triggered animations spill across the walls of the Cosmos Theatre, enveloping audiences in the mythic world. Visual artist Thatcher Bohrman, Meg’s partner, directs the projected art, expanding the underworld onto three sides of the stage.
“It’s grown every time we’ve performed it,” says Miller. “In a theatre like the Cosmos, with its female-led board and supportive team, it feels especially resonant. Inanna is about restoring the balance of the feminine divine. To stage it here, at this moment, is powerful.”
For Bohrman the story’s relevance is both ancient and immediate. “We are in a collective descent right now,” she reflects, “and that’s frightening, but Inanna shows us that the underworld is not the end, it’s a rite of passage. By normalizing descent, we can find compassion, rebuild and rise again.”
Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld will play for three nights, October 30, 31, and November 1 at 7:30pm, at the Cosmos Theatre in Prescott. The production is recommended for mature audiences due to its psychological intensity and themes of transformation.
Third Road Theatre invites the community to witness a story as old as civilization itself, reborn for our time: the descent into darkness, the breaking apart, and the light of the return.
