The Costumes of Bear Country

By Beth Novak, Costume Designer for Bear Country

Bear Country is a play that takes place over a 50+ year span of time dramatizing important moments both real and imagined in the life of Coach Bear Bryant. There is a cast of only four actors, one who plays Coach Bryant at the end of his career looking back on his life; one who plays Coach Bryant throughout his life; and two who play all of the other important people that populated his life during important decision making and life changing moments. The mature Bryant wears only one iconic outfit – instantly recognizable to anyone. The other three actors have close to thirty different looks, some that have to happen in just seconds. The creative team (director, designers) decided to take a somewhat presentational approach to the costumes.

The play is written in a fluid style with scenes bleeding into scenes and actors changing characters within the context of a scene. If we tried to create completely different visual statements for each character the production would run the risk of becoming a frantic “fashion” show which could actually be more intrusive than helpful. We chose to use very realistic “period” clothing pieces to enhance the time, place and character of each scene of the play, but also chose not to attempt extremely detailed changes (wigs, facial hair, body padding, etc). Thus, an actor that plays two coaches during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s wears the same pants and shoes, but changes his jacket and adds a hat for one of the coaches.

We all recognized from the very beginning of the project that we would have to be especially true to the details of Coach Bryant’s life because we are in the heart of “Bear” country and there is an enormous amount of common knowledge about him and his story. But we are also fortunate to have fantastic resources at our fingertips. So, in addition to book research, I have been to the Bear Bryant Museum and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and have received generous help from both in the way of photos and information.

An important element of the visual story is the “period” football paraphernalia from the 1920’s, 30’s and 1970’s. We found a company in Los Angeles that rents authentic athletic costumes for movies, TV and commercials and they have much of what we need in their stock. In addition they are building other special items just for us. These uniforms (helmets, shoes, jerseys, padding, etc) greatly enhance the authentic feeling that we are trying to create for our production of Bear Country.