Friday's a day to spotlight the impact of AIDS on the creative community. Orange County organizations will eschew joint efforts in favor of quietly dramatic statements.

By ZAN DUBIN Zan Dubin..BD: TIMES STAFF WRITER

Nov. 30, 1995 12 AM PT

No need to dry-clean that Donna Karan for this year’s Day Without Art. Arts groups in Orange County have abandoned their customary joint performance in favor of quiet, independent actions that they hope will drive home the day’s message with greater depth and breadth.

Since 1992, several institutions here have marked the international observance--which spotlights the disproportionate toll AIDS has taken on the arts community--with a single, collaborative presentation of dance, music and drama. A ballet celebrating life was the centerpiece of last year’s event.

But this year, most of these groups--which have been meeting in recent weeks to coordinate plans--wanted to get back to the original essence of A Day Without Art: Initially, plays were canceled, and paintings were draped as a stark metaphor for a world literally without art, a world that conceivably could result if the epidemic continues unchecked.

“Many people around the country,” notes Laguna Art Museum director Naomi Vine, “feel that the most dramatic and effective way to point out how much the art world has lost is to take something away we’re used to seeing, to cover a painting or remove art from the gallery.”

So on Friday, the museum will display a shrouded model of its original building, designed by Myron Hunt. The Huntington Beach Art Center and the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art will be closed. Ballet Pacifica will halt rehearsal to remember such dancers as Rudolf Nureyev who have died of the disease. The Muckenthaler Cultural Center will dim the lights on its current exhibit, and the Newport Harbor Art Museum will drape an outdoor sculpture.

About 20 local institutions plan such strategies. Meanwhile, in hopes of better spreading the word, three theater venues--the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Irvine Barclay Theatre and South Coast Repertory--will use playbill flyers to urge patrons to support local AIDS service organizations. Laguna Playhouse program ads since mid-November have drawn attention to the United Nations’ annual World AIDS Day, with which A Day Without Art was conceived to coincide.

The hope is that “we’ll be more effective by getting the message to many thousands of people attending different events at many theaters,” says Timothy B. Dunn, a spokesman for Opera Pacific and chief organizer of this and past Day Without Art commemorations in the county.

One institution will stage a special activity. Today through Saturday, UC Irvine is presenting Paula Vogel’s “Baltimore Waltz,” a bittersweet fantasy about a brother and sister in the age of AIDS. The Obie award-winning play is part of UCI’s Artists and AIDS Project, a World AIDS Day event. (See accompanying schedule).

As of June, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency, about 3,880 Orange County residents had contracted the AIDS virus and more than 2,240 had died from it--designers, directors, actors and dancers among them. This year, the Performing Arts Center’s education coordinator and box office manager were lost.

The first Day Without Art took place in 1989, conceived by Visual AIDS, a coalition in New York whose executive director, Nick Debs, has high praise for quiet commemorations.

“I think it’s great, and I’m glad to see people remembering the day’s original intention,” Debs said recently. “It’s not about having a party. It’s about reaching people and getting information out there and shaking people up.”

O.C.’s toned-down observation is not part of a trend, Debs said. “No, hardly, and it’s especially refreshing to see this happening in Orange County. If one is a snotty New Yorker, one thinks of Orange County as being the home of President Nixon and a hotbed of California Republicanism, so I’d not expect people there to be taking a more radical route. I find it very encouraging in that part of the world.”

Actually, arts groups in Orange County have observed A Day Without Art in one form or another since 1989. But it hasn’t been easy to measure how these commemorations have benefited the cause.

Only about $2,000 has been raised for AIDS service groups at the observances. “But you have no idea what the long-term results of the consciousness-raising are,” Dunn says. “Perhaps during the holidays people can’t give, but they do in February when they get money back from taxes.”

In any case, this year around the world, some 6,500 artists and groups--up by about 300 from last year--are expected to take part in observances, according to Debs. The number of local participants has been growing too. But public response to the collaborative performances in Orange County has not lived up to expectations. Last year, organizers hoped to fill the 750-seat Irvine Barclay, but only about 400 people turned out.

Likewise, only about 50 people--many of them staff or performers’ friends--showed up for a reading of an AIDS-related play by members of the Laguna Playhouse, said executive director Richard Stein.

“To put that kind of effort into something artistic that is attended by such a low number of people is not beneficial to us, and I don’t think it’s beneficial to the cause,” Stein said. Distributing flyers at many venues will have “more widespread benefit, we hope.”

Artistic considerations also motivated a retooling, according to organizer Christopher Burrill, Irvine Barclay’s operations manager. Last year’s Whitman’s Sampler performance, which also involved a play reading and chorale music, “was in fact somewhat muddied. It had some excellent parts, but as a whole it had no clear guiding line through it.”

Still, Dunn says he believes all efforts have been worthwhile.

“Personally, I feel that A Day Without Art has created an awareness of the effects of AIDS and the needs of those who are suffering from AIDS and, perhaps most importantly, a greater empathy and understanding. It has taken away part of the fear people have of the unknown.”

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Agencies Where Help Is Available

The following agencies in Orange County provide a variety of services to people affected by HIV or AIDS:

* AIDS Response Program: (714) 534-0961.

* AIDS Services Foundation of Orange County: (714) 253-1513.

* AIDS Walk Orange County: (714) 955-1400.

* American Red Cross/HIV-AIDS Education: (714) 835-5381.

* Christ Chapel of Laguna AIDS Support: (714) 376-2099.

* The Federation: (714) 450-3113.

* HIV: Women’s Voices: (714) 497-5330.

* Laguna Beach Community Clinic: (714) 494-0761.

* Laguna Shanti: (714) 494-1446.