- Alan Bowne
Alan Bowne (1945-1989) was an American
playwright andauthor . He was a member of theNew Dramatists .He wrote a number of plays including "Beirut", "Forty-Deuce", "Sharon and Billy", and "The Beany and Cecil Show", many of which are available from
Broadway Play Publishing Inc. .He also wrote one novel "Wally Wonderstruck". He died of
AIDS at the age of forty four.Daybreak/Bloodstream
Alan Bowne's play "Beirut" was adapted to the tv-screen as "Daybreak" ("Bloodstream") (1993) starring
Cuba Gooding Jr andMoira Kelly .The film is a
dystopian science fiction thriller set in the near future in a moreauthoritarian America. It deals with the social persecution and criminalisation of people who are infected with asexually transmitted disease similar toHIV . Those who test positive for the disease are forcibly placed intoquarantine camps. In the quarantine camps they are tattooed with a "P" by the authorities to indicate their positive status and shot if they try to escape. The quarantine camps are dilapidated places where patients are left to die without care or contact with the outside world.Moira Kelly plays "Blue" a young woman who earns a living scavenging metal in the city. She goes with a friend who wants to be tested to a "Helping Hand" clinic. The clinic has the sinister slogan "Making your hard choices easier". Outside the clinic they are given a card warning them against getting tested there. The card demands "Why is sickness a crime? Why is hospital a prison? Why does the helping hand hold a gun?". "Blue" is disturbed by this warning and meets an activist in the resistance called "Torch" played byCuba Gooding Jr .The resistance works to prevent the quarantine of those who are positive. They arrange testing outside the official system so that they will not be quarantined. They rescue people being held by the "Helping Hand" clinic in order to give them medicine, care, and understanding. They distribute condoms and clean needles to help prevent the spread of the disease. This is contrasted with government advertisements for the "Helping Hand" clinics that threaten "The only way is not to play".
A relationship develops between "Blue" and "Torch" and it is revealed that "Torch" is positive. "Torch" is arrested because of his activism and when the police discover that he is positive they send him to quarantine. "Blue" sneaks into the quarantine in order to see "Torch". "Blue" wants to be infected by "Torch" so that they can live together inside the quarantine camp but "Torch" is reluctant to infect "Blue". This central scene in the movie is the only scene in the play "Beirut" upon which the film is based. "Blue" could be considered an early fictional heterosexual example of a bugchaser.
External links
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5D8163DF931A35751C1A96F948260 Alan Bownes Obituary in the New York Times]
* [http://www.athenatheatre.com/mt/archives/cat_beirut.php Article about a 2004 production of "Beirut" with a video trailer]
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