Drama About AIDS Gives a Playwright New Hope : Arts: A struggling author is one of five student regional finalists in national theater competition.

A former salesman and data processor determined to become a professional playwright got some encouraging news recently: His one-act play about AIDS is a regional finalist in a national theater competition.

Rideaux Baldwin’s “HIVers” is one of five plays by university and community college students in the Southwest to compete for a shot at being staged in Washington.

But first, the 28-year-old Glendale Community College student must win the American College Theatre Festival competition next month at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His play and four others were selected from more than 220 entries from Utah, California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Guam.

“Of the three plays I have written, this was nirvana,” Baldwin said. “. . . When I went to the performance, it was 99% of what I envisioned.”

That vision is of a bleak, surreal world where HIV carriers are incarcerated in a dreary hospital complex, sealed off from society. Confined to their rooms, they wait for nurses, doctors and, finally, death.

The play is about a woman with the AIDS virus and her nurse. In the beginning, he fears touching the woman, but in the course of nine scenes, she slowly breaks his reserve.

“The more you know someone, the less frightening they are,” said Jill Benone, Baldwin’s drama teacher, who directed the play. “Because these two people are able to touch each other, somehow they’re going to touch the rest of the world.”

The audience was so moved, Benone said, “everyone was crying.”

Baldwin talks about the need to end social and racial segregation with a missionary’s zeal. He dedicated “HIVers” to Kimberly Bergalis, who was believed to have acquired AIDS from her dentist. Bergalis became a household name in 1991 when she testified before Congress about the disease. She became a symbol that showed anyone, regardless of sexual or drug history, is at risk of contracting AIDS.

“It seems we get so far ahead in our thinking and then we step back,” Baldwin said. “When we found out Magic Johnson had AIDS, everyone threw accolades. But when it came to him playing on court, the cheers were gone. They isolated him again.”

Baldwin grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, where he lives with his mother and 5-year-old daughter.

He has had a number of jobs while attending college, including a stint as a salesman at a Torrance gift store until last week, and before that, as a data processor for Northrop in Pico Rivera.

Ken Gray, a theater arts professor at Glendale College, remembers talking to him after seeing his first play, “Sister Minnie’s Last Disciple,” at the Greater Los Angeles Area Drama Festival in 1990. At the time, Baldwin attended El Camino College.

“I thought he had enough material there for five plays,” Gray said. “But it was so well written and the dialogue was great.”

Baldwin transferred to Compton College in 1991, but his second play ran into so many production problems he nearly gave up on drama. He was ready to drop out of school when Gray helped motivate him to write his third play. With Gray’s encouragement, Baldwin enrolled at Glendale College last fall as a theater arts major.

Two actors were cast in September and Baldwin worked with them as part of a theater production course. He found out the play made it to the finals on Dec. 13, the last day of six performances at Glendale College.

“People cried during the auditions and I cried once per show,” he said. “The way the actors grew, I forgot that I actually wrote it.”