William L. Bowman Jr., local actor, magician, physical therapist assistant, author, and playwright has had a very good year. Bowman has published three plays with Pioneer Drama, one of the largest and most well known publishers of plays for school, church, and community theatre productions.
Some local theatre goers may remember the world premier of his play “Antiques” which was performed by Ottumwa Community Players, Directed by Bill Allen in 2008. For the 2024-2025 fiscal year, “Antiques”, which is a full length drama, examining life, attachment, and moving on, had 13 paid performances across the U.S.
Local audiences have yet to experience William’s other two plays. His one-act play, “Death of a Dead Guy” has been published the longest. It is a farce which is a send-up of the old Film Noir style detective stories. The male lead character was created by William’s father. He is Pete Cannon, the meanest, roughest, toughest ace private eye, ear, and nose (throat comes extra) in the business and relies on his partner, the former con artist, Toots Doll Monahan to solve the mystery. “Death of a Dead Guy” had twelve paid performances in the fiscal year, many of them by schools in Canada.
William’s third play, “Race Day’, which was only published in January, had seven paid performances by May first. “Race Day” is a fifteen minute one-act comedy which takes place inside the mind of a person running their first marathon. The characters are the parts of the runners’ mind (Intellect, Pleasure, Ego, etc.) and the casting is gender neutral.
Later this Summer, two more Pete Cannon One-Acts, “Red Herrings and Monkeyshines” and “The Lollipop Caper” are scheduled to be published by Brooklyn Publishing. Brooklyn Publishing is another very well known publisher of plays for schools and community theatre groups and is located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
For more information, follow William on Facebook and check out his plays at Pioneer: https://www.pioneerdrama.com/SearchResults.asp?keywords=William+L+Bowman+Jr.
