Alabama Shakespeare Festival's "Bear Country" starts Virginia Samford's new season

Rodney Clark has the title role in "Bear Country."

In the beginning, "Bear Country" was all about money.

"I was in a budget meeting here," says Mike Vigilant, chief operating officer at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. "And our controller mentioned that if we ever did a play about Coach Bryant, it would be very successful.
"They looked at me and said, 'Mike, you played football ... You write the play.'"

Thus began an odyssey that led Vigilant to write "Bear Country," a play about the legendary football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. It sold almost all of its seats during a month-and-half run in Montgomery at the beginning of this year, and now ASF is bringing the show to Birmingham. It will run Aug. 6-30 at the Virginia Samford Theatre.

Vigilant was not an Alabama football fan.

"I grew up on the west coast and was a huge Oakland Raiders fan," he says. "Kenny Stabler was and still is probably my favorite quarterback of all time. Interestingly, his nemesis at the time was Joe Namath and the New York Jets, so I watched both of them growing up."

Vigilant's writing process began by interviewing some of Bryant's former players.

"For me, the story evolved out of interviewing those guys," he says. "What amazed me was the look in their eyes and the tone of their voices when they talked about Coach Bryant. To a person, they think of Coach Bryant every day of their lives. No person outside of my father had that kind of impact on me. It was amazing to me that these men in their 50s, 60s and 70s were saying this, and that's what I wanted this play to be about."

"Bear Country" is told largely in flashbacks, with Rodney Clark playing Bryant, William Peden as the younger Bryant and John Patrick Hayden and Yaegel T. Welch in multiple roles.

Peden is new to the cast, but the other three were in "Bear Country" at ASF, where it played at 98 percent capacity, the best-selling play in the history of ASF's Octagon Theatre, according to Vigilant.

"I am shocked and amazed at what happened," he says.

Audiences in Birmingham will see the same quality of production as was presented at ASF, Vigilant says. "It will have all the bells and whistles. I'm so happy it worked well here, and my highest hope is that it will succeed in Birmingham."

"Bear Country" will be performed Tuesdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets ($38-$45) go on sale Monday through ASF (800-841-4273 or www.asf.net).

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