Theater

- Sad subjects sometimes lend themselves to sad footnotes. “Transfusion,” a world premiere by local playwright and San Diego State University graduate Janet Schechter Tiger, tells the story of a young gay man who gives his sick father a transfusion only to later find out that he has AIDS, which he has thereby given to his father as well.

Diane Shea, an artistic director who produces plays under the banner “The Play’s The Thing,” first heard the play July 24 at a meeting of Scripteasers, a local script reading group, and later brought it to San Diego Walks for Life, an AIDS support group.

Walks for Life decided to produce a media preview at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre’s small theater Thursday and Friday, to be followed by a fund-raiser for AIDS victims Feb. 19 at the Lyceum Stage of the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

Shea, who will direct the play, said that two weeks after she heard the script, “it started setting up a resonance in my head. I think this play serves as a consciousness-raiser. Spell that r-a-z-o-r. It’s a bloodletting. It’s something we need to think about and give voice to while AIDS is still a critical issue.”

Shea, Tiger, the actors and the technical people are all donating their time and money they would have earned to the fund-raising effort. So what is the sad footnote? Robert Cyr, the young actor who read the part of the young gay man at Scripteasers six months ago, died Jan. 6 of AIDS.