Event

Descent of the Goddess Inanna

Based on 5,000-year-old Sumerian epics from the region that is now Iraq, the play charts the journey of Inanna, Goddess of Heaven and Earth, to visit her sister, Queen of the Underworld. Sister turns against sister, and she is brutally murdered. At the same time, a present-day woman a wedding photographer finds her images turning into nightmares. In these twin journeys, the mundane and the mythic merge as they struggle toward a resurrection.

DESCENT OF INANNA also includes the myth's broad humor and erotic imagery. When Inanna visits Enki, god of wisdom, he becomes roaring drunk and gifts her with all the attributes of civilization, from poetry and song to armies and bookkeeping. The courtship scene with her king/lover Dumuzi (the Biblical Tammuz) is the Mesopotamian precursor to the intense images of the SONG OF SOLOMON.

The performance features a cast of five from the Eye's 12-member Mythic Kitchen ensemble. Written by the Eye's artistic partners Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller, Inanna was first presented in their Philadelphia theatre in 1999, remounted in 2002 when they moved to the North Bay. This production, using the same text and Fuller's original music score, is entirely restaged and redesigned. It features 18 large puppets, digital video, and shadow-play.