What happens when football and aliens mix in the American South? Set in 1974, an Alabama family is forced to confront long-submerged truths when sports legend Bear Bryant visits their hometown of Balls. As the big arrival nears, and other unexpected guests materialize, the family struggles to maintain their identity, civility, and what’s left of their sanity. A comedy with bite, KILLING THE BEAR turns a spotlight on the insularity of small-town life, the frenzied clout of college football in the Bible Belt, and the distorted constructs of hero-worship. “There is something frighteningly real and revealing rippling just beneath the surface of Jonathan Yukich’s new work. It is both playful and dangerous, like a fun house mirror in which we can’t help but recognize ourselves even as the image before us writhes uncontrollably; ridiculous in one moment, monstrous in the next. The real genius of this play resides in Yukich’s ability to create characters that so fully embody our desperate yearning for our own American dream: the one we were meant for, the one we are owed. KILLING THE BEAR is about as American as a play gets.” Jeni Mahoney, Producing Artistic Director, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference “Jonathan Yukich isn’t afraid to play with absurdity, to lean into the freakishness of, say, a two-headed cow, but his love for the South, for these strange characters, allows him to find something resonant and true within this landscape. The ghost of Bear Bryant wouldn’t know what to do with this play, but Flannery O’Connor would heartily approve. An electric, wild, utterly wonderful play.” Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here and The Family Fang
