WESTMINSTER : AIDS Play Presented to Students

Mixing dance, music and drama, a touring theater group came to Westminster on Wednesday to help educate high school students about the deadly threat of AIDS.

La Quinta High School students packed gymnasium bleachers to watch two presentations of “Secrets,” a 40-minute play that depicts the anguish of a high school senior who tests positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.

Following the performance, a question-and-answer session between the audience and the actors illustrated how many students feel more directly threatened by AIDS since Earvin (Magic) Johnson announced his retirement after testing positive for HIV.

“How is AIDS spread?” asked one male student. “What is the best type of condom to use?” asked one female student.

The five young actors in “Secrets,” who are employees of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, which co-sponsors the play, regularly consult with Kaiser Permanente AIDS experts. They said Johnson’s announcement has prompted their teen-age audiences to ask more pointed questions about how to lessen the risk of contracting AIDS.

Johnson’s announcement proved to students that AIDS is not a “gay disease,” said Lisa Beezley, the program director.

The play “makes you think. It’s scary,” said 15-year-old Tawania Jacquett as she left the first performance. “I think more schools should be getting involved.”

Indeed, more schools are trying to get on the waiting list--currently, anywhere from six months to a year--for the performance. Requests for the program, which has toured between Bakersfield and San Diego for about 2 1/2 years, more than tripled after Johnson’s surprise announcement, said Gus Gaona, who coordinates performance dates.

“There is always a problem when you bring a discussion like this into a public school. But because of the impact (of this performance), it is important that our population has information beforehand,” La Quinta Principal Tom Holler said.

Still, at the request of La Quinta officials, one short scene in the play was altered to leave out an actor demonstrating how to put on a condom using a banana, Beezley said.

The “Secrets” plot centers on a high school senior named Eddie, who shared an intravenous needle twice with friends he thought were “clean.” After testing positive for HIV, Eddie learns that he has triggered infection in a chain of people.

“It makes you think twice before having sex,” 16-year-old Lorraine Negrete said. Teen-agers “don’t think we’ll have it, but now you have to think about (AIDS).”

Cal Daniels, 17, said he was impressed with the answers that performers provided at the end of the show. “They answered every question you could think of,” he said.

Attendance at the performance was voluntary and only 12 of La Quinta’s more than 1,400 students did not attend, Assistant Principal Connie Van Luit said.

Tim Miller, executive director of the AIDS Response Program in Garden Grove, said high school students are an important age group to educate about the disease because it is during the teen years when people generally become sexually active.

Nationally, there are 195,718 reported AIDS cases, according to statistics from the AIDS Response Program. Miller said there are 391 reported AIDS cases in Orange County of people ages 13 to 29.