SPECIAL EVENTS : O.C. Artists to Join AIDS-Awareness Effort This Weekend

For the third year now, many artists and art institutions around the country will observe “A Day Without Art” this weekend, shutting down and cloaking artworks or, alternately, waiving admissions and presenting special events to call attention to the massive toll that AIDS has taken in the arts community.

In Orange County, South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa will stage a reading of Anthony Clarvoe’s new play, “The Living,” which draws parallels between today’s AIDS epidemic and the Black Plague of 17th-Century London. Actually, the reading will take place Monday at 7:30 p.m. on SCR’s Mainstage. “A Day Without Art” is Sunday, but both SCR stages are booked that day for regular matinee and evening performances, according to a spokesman.

In any case, “The Living” concerns a small group of citizens from government, medicine, the clergy and elsewhere struggling to cope with the rapacious scourge of the plague. Clarvoe, who wrote “Pick Up Ax” for an SCR workshop in 1989, said that as he researched the new work, he was struck over and over by similarities between 1665 London and the present day.

Common to both, he said during a phone interview, are “a national government very slow to respond to a terrible crisis, a health-care system in disarray, a lot of factionalism and finger-pointing, a lot of suspicion between city and country, between rich and poor, between different interpretations of the wishes of God, between more liberal and more conservative ideas of what government ought to be doing for its citizens, and conflicts between the needs of the population of a country and its foreign interests.”

But Clarvoe also perceived a stark contrast between the two eras, “between what these people (of London) were able to do, the kind of actions they rose to, and the sadder experiences we’ve seen recently.”

Like his cast of disparate characters, who become united in their fight to survive, the “heroic” folk he read about “didn’t use the plague as an opportunity to fall to pieces or to start destroying other people around them,” Clarvoe said. Instead, they saw it as a chance “to try and pull together into a new community, a new idea of what a community could be.

“There was a really clear effort to understand what was happening, not only with an eye to saving themselves, but to passing along lessons they learned to future generations.”

SCR artistic director Martin Benson will direct Monday’s reading. The cast will include Cotter Smith, formerly of ABC TV’s “Equal Justice;” former Laguna Playhouse artistic director Doug Rowe, and SCR producing-artistic director David Emmes.

Admission is free, but cash donations ($10 is suggested) and non-perishable food will be accepted Monday evening and at SCR’s weekend performances of “A Christmas Carol and “The Caretaker.” All donations will be sent to the AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County. Information: (714) 957-4033.

Following are other local “Day Without Art” activities, all on Sunday:

* The Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach will waive admission to its galleries and to a special program at 3 p.m. by performance artist and AIDS activist Wendell Jones of Los Angeles; will display posters created for the second annual HIV/AIDS Awareness poster contest, sponsored by the local chapter of the American Red Cross; and will offer educational materials on AIDS. Several artists in the museum’s current “Third Newport Biennial: Mapping Histories” exhibit will alter their works. Information: (714) 759-1122.

* The Fullerton Museum Center will waive admission, dim its gallery lights, and cloak five works in its current exhibit, “The Day of the Dead: A Consequence of Life,” in tribute to the man who owned the artworks, Ted Warmbold, who died of AIDS-related complications. At 6 p.m. there will be a free presentation by performance artist Jean Wiley of Costa Mesa and folk-rock musician John Rolling Thunder of Fullerton. Museum Center staff will wear red ribbons all day to draw attention to the AIDS epidemic, and will provide visitors with materials to make their own ribbons. (714) 738-6545.

* The UC Irvine Fine Arts Gallery will be closed and a large, specially printed poster will be placed on its front door. (714) 856-6610.

* Every 10 minutes, the Works Gallery in South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, will play a recording of a church bell ringing, a reminder of the frequency of AIDS-related deaths. Gallery attendants will also wear and hand out red ribbons, and will distribute educational materials. (714) 979-6757.

* The Laguna Art Museum will offer educational materials, and the staff will wear red ribbons. (714) 494-8971.