Hermione and the Bear

Going deep into study of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale for a play proposal, I had the notion of the way I'd like to stage it—with the actress playing Hermione to also play the Bear, clad in furs, rampaging across the stage to devour Antigonus who is leaving her infant daughter Perdita exposed to die on the wild coast of Bohemia. She will then give the speech of Time at the interval, with the bear head slung under her arm. I wanted to create that here, the intense storm of matter and energy.

The bear in the original staging of The Winter's Tale would have been a real, living bear on loan from the bear pits neighboring the theater along the south bank of the Thames. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, one of these bears is mentioned by name, Sackerson!