Bacon was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia. He is the youngest of six children. His mother, Ruth Hilda (1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Bacon (1910–2005), was an urban planner who served as executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and authored the seminal text Design of Cities.
Bacon attended Julia R. Masterman School in the Spring Garden section of Philadelphia for middle and high school.
At age 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full state-funded scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a five-week arts program where he studied theater under Glory Van Scott. The experience solidified Bacon's passion for the arts.
