Alan Bowne
(1945-1989)The plays of Alan Bowne offer an unfiltered glimpse of 80s New York, blending naturalistic urban vernacular with wicked wit, sharp social critique, and boldly theatrical dialogue. In their vivid portrayal of society’s underbelly, they have been compared to the dramas of Maxim Gorky, David Mamet, and Harold Pinter.
Photo courtesy: Barbara Hayes
Born in 1945 in the suburbs of Hemet, California, Bowne grew up in a troubled household with a violent father. After studying in Long Beach and San Francisco, he moved to New York City in the early 1970s. During these years he lived in the Lower East Side and Bensonhurst, supported himself as an editor and ghostwriter for Columbia University, and wrote short stories influenced by Henry James and Emily Brontë. He also worked as a drug dealer and film extra.
Bowne began playwriting at 35, and his first play, Forty-Deuce (1981), premiered Off-Broadway to great acclaim. Set among tough, gay hustlers in Times Square, it follows Ricky, a teenage sex worker played by Kevin Bacon, who accidentally kills a 12-year-old runaway with tainted drugs and tries to frame a wealthy john, pulling his fellow hustlers into a scheme that spirals into violence and sexual perversion. Bacon won an Obie for the role in 1982, a breakout moment in his career.
Bowne’s second play, The Able-Bodied Seaman (1983), follows a foul-mouthed navy vet trying to regain his daughter’s affection, and premiered at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. A member of New Dramatists, Bowne went on to write A Snake in the Vein (1985), a study of two street punks in drug rehab, and Sharon and Billy (1986), a disarmingly tender exploration of incest in a dysfunctional working-class family loosely modelled on his own.
He collaborated with Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol’s long-time associate, on several films, beginning with Forty-Deuce (1982), which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. He went on to co-write Mixed Blood (1985), a gritty crime drama following a group of dope-peddling Brazilian teenagers in Alphabet City locked in a turf war with a rival Puerto Rican gang, and Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), a quirky comedy about a street-smart boxer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, who falls for the daughter of a violent local mafioso.
Bowne’s most enduring play, Beirut (1987), is a one-act drama unfolding in a fascist, dystopian New York where Torch, quarantined for a sexually transmitted disease, is startled by the arrival of his uninfected girlfriend Blue. Inspired by Republican congressman William Dannemeyer’s proposal that people with HIV/AIDS be tattooed and quarantined, the play is a searing metaphor for the AIDS crisis and was recently revived with Oscar Isaac and Marisa Tomei. In Bowne’s imagined world, sex is outlawed, those who test negative are forced to carry “N-Cards”, and the bodies of the infected are piled up and burned in Tompkins Square Park each Sunday. It premiered at MCC Theater in 1987, with one reviewer calling it “a Romeo and Juliet of the boroughs.”
Spook is believed to have been written in 1985, though no definitive date can be established from the surviving manuscripts. Originally titled ‘The Gorgeous Ghost’, it was inspired by Bowne’s love of Shakespeare and Henry Fielding, and bears the influence of Restoration Comedy. Two other plays—The Little Monsters and Cocaine and Underpants—remain unperformed and undated. Both are set in rundown apartments on the Lower East Side and follow the crazed scheming of small-time drug-dealers who turn tricks to survive, with shockingly violent consequences.
Bowne left New York in 1985 and relocated to Petaluma, California. He passed away from HIV/AIDS-related illnesses on November 24, 1989 in his Sonoma County home, aged only 44. He had just completed his novel, Wally Wonderstruck, which remains unpublished.
Plays
Forty-Deuce, 1981
The Able-Bodied Seaman, 1983
A Snake in the Vein, 1985
Sharon and Billy, 1986
Beirut, 1987
Spook, undated
Cocaine and Underpants, undated
The Little Monsters, undated
Resources
Alastair Curtis in conversation with Barbara Hayes, August 2025.
Photo: Barbara Hayes