The Black Bear Inside Us
By Yiwen Wu
In the loud sound of silence inside a forest, Karissa Murrell Myers first had the idea of writing Black Bear Island. “Watch out for the bear,” she was told. Then, all of a sudden, the sound of the wind, the movement of the leaves, a crack in the wood––every sound became “the bear.” Even though nothing really happened, the very thought of a possible attack ended up bringing about an eerie and deep-seated feeling of fear, no less intense than the fear in the face of actual violence.
Black Bear Island, as a play, explores how the presence of violence, whether enacted or not, profoundly affects our psyches. Taking place in between a psychological sphere and a natural forest, the play pushes the boundaries between the real and the fantastical. It calls us to ponder the power of our unconscious through languages of nature: as the play goes on, the forest expands and eventually outgrows itself. Meanwhile, memories rewind in full force, and fantasies take over to haunt our senses. In the end, the play forces us to confront our inner black bear, the more emotional and animalistic sides of ours that lie within.
While zooming into the inner worlds, the play also encourages us to see how the very personal is simultaneously social and political and how our ascribed racial and gender identities powerfully shape our expression of feelings. Following the lives of two young lovers growing into adulthood, the play unfolds to reveal the reverberations of cultural identities: how historical ideals of masculinity continue to valorize physical strength and chivalric violence among men while discrediting the power of female rage, especially for women of color.
The black bear, again, can provide us with a vivid illustration of how differences are socially constructed. The public memories of the bears are exceptionally multifaceted, perhaps due to the fact that they are similar to but not humans. Bears, like shapeshifters, continue to take on new meanings in various mediums: since one of the earliest stories of bears, such as medieval epic poem “Beowulf,” bears have been prized as the symbol of chivalric bravery and resilience; in tales such as “The Fisherman and the Bear,” bears are depicted as aggressive and clumsy, but also sweet and caring; most commonly in modern media, however, bears are conceived as these dangerous fantastical beings, even though, in reality, black bears are primarily vegetarian and rarely attack humans. They are a shy and adaptive species but made dangerous and fearful by our collective construction of myths and memories. This question of how something so innocent and pure can grow into something violent, too, lies at the core of our play.
Like the ever-changing images of the black bear, the characters in this play also defy simple categorization. They are at once tender and tough. They love. They fight. They forget. They remember. They would not stop finding humor even in the most distressed situations. They are humans. Ultimately, we hope that Black Bear Island can provide a space where we can explore a multiplicity of possibilities in ourselves.
